Applied Cultural Anthropology, or
by jacobk
Summary: ... How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cruciatus. Albus Dumbledore always worried about the parallels between Harry Potter and Tom Riddle. But let's be honest, Harry never really had the drive to be the next dark lord. Of course, things may have turned out quite differently if one of the other muggle-raised Gryffindors wound up in Slytherin instead.
1. Chapter 1

AN: So I'm a little late to the Harry Potter AU party, but this idea just wouldn't leave me alone. If you enjoy (or not) I'd appreciate hearing about it in a review.

AN2: Just so we're clear, this is not a romance fic, and definitely not a Hermione/Snape fic. They are the two characters highlighted above because they get the most screen time.

ooOoo

Hermione approached the Sorting Hat with some trepidation as Gregory Goyle lumbered off to join his friends at the Slytherin table. She was feeling the pressure of this moment more acutely than her yearmates, most of whom seemed happy not to have to do anything more strenuous than try on a hat before being placed in a house. Hermione had put in hours of extra reading and practice so that she could earn the right to the house of her choice, and losing control of that choice to an inanimate object was frustrating.

Hermione's Hogwarts acceptance letter had opened up a whole new world. Not just a chance to learn magic, it also represented a chance to start over. To meet a group of people that didn't know the eager beaver, Granger the bookworm, teacher's pet...

She shook away her thoughts as she reached the stool and dropped the hat on her head without hesitation. Showing nervousness wouldn't be very Gryffindor-ish, after all, and she didn't want to do anything to hurt her chances of being sorted into that house. A disproportionate number of famous wizards had come out of Gryffindor, and everything she had read suggested that it was the house of the cool kids-popular, well-liked, able to do what they wanted and face a slap on the wrist at worst as a consequence.

"_Well, well, what have we here,_" the hat's voice suddenly sounded in the back of her mind, and Hermione had to suppress the urge to bolt upright. She sat quietly and focused on thinking brave thoughts.

"_That's not going to do anything, you know,_" the hat said, sounding amused. "_You can't cover over a lifetime of work with a few stray thoughts._"

Hermione felt her heart plummet at the thought of being sorted into Ravenclaw-the destination her parents had picked out as soon as she had finished describing the house system to them-the last thing she needed was to be sorted into a whole house of nerds. She desperately cast about for an argument against the inevitable.

"_Dumbledore!_" She thought, desperately. "_Dumbledore must like books, and he was no Ravenclaw._"

"_You fancy yourself the next Dumbledore?_" The hat asked. Hermione thought she detected a faint note of mockery.

"_Well, not exactly,_" Hermione couldn't imagine ever matching the famous Headmaster, although she did fancy taking a run at his record of seven years of top marks. "_I just hope that I can learn to be brave and noble like Dumbledore-_"

"_You're about a hundred years too young to pull the wool over my eyes, child,_" the hat interrupted, although it didn't sound upset. "_But that kind of effort and ambition should see you in good stead in SLYTHERIN!_"

When she realized the last word had been spoken out loud, Hermione reached up to remove the hat and stood. She set it back down on the stool-absently noting that her hands were shaking-and then turned to size up her new housemates.

Her first thought was that they looked surprisingly normal. Slytherin was famed for prizing ambition and cunning, and more recently had gained notoriety as the house that produced more Death Eaters than all of the others combined. For all of that, the students in front of her could have been any other group of eleven year olds, except for the matching green and silver ties.

Hermione took a seat near the other first years and settled down to watch the rest of the sorting process. A "Greengrass, Daphne" followed Hermione to Slytherin, while "MacMillain, Ernie" went to Hufflepuff. The Sorting Hat settled in to a steady rhythm, and its periodic announcements were the only sound in the Great Hall... at least until Harry Potter was called down to be sorted.

Whispers broke out as soon as his name was called, and the conversations only intensified when the Hat seemed to linger on his Sorting. Hermione realized she was clenching her fists hard enough to feel painful, and chided herself as she relaxed her hands. Harry had been friendly enough on the train, but he hadn't struck her as anything particularly special. There was no reason to get so invested in his house placement.

She still felt a pang of disappointment when the hat announcement of "GRYFFINDOR!" sent the red and gold decorated table into an uproar. Across the table a blonde boy-"Malfoy, Draco," if memory served-snorted derisively.

"I knew that prat was Gryffindor through and through," Malfoy declared.

"Harry's not that bad," Hermione replied, "he seemed perfectly nice when I spoke to him on the train."

"You actually met the boy-who-lived?" The girl next to her-Tracy Davis-asked, eyes wide.

Hermione related the circumstances of her brief encounter with Harry and Ron, pleasantly surprised by the rapt attention she was receiving from her housemates. She had read about Harry's fame in the wizarding world, but she hadn't really had the time to internalize it the same way that somebody brought up on stories of the boy-who-lived would have. They were acting like she had met the Queen.

Eventually Hermione's story wound down and conversation turned to other topics. Most of the discussion-only briefly interrupted by Dumbledore's "speech" at the end of the sorting and the appearance of their dinner-centered around everybody's hopes and expectations for the coming year. Inevitably the discussion came around to Quidditch and Draco, as he had been doing throughout the night, decided to use the topic as an opportunity to flaunt his family's wealth.

"First years aren't even allowed to have their own brooms." Hermione said, interrupting Draco's loving description of the horrendously expensive broom his father had bought for his last birthday.

"I know that," Draco said, glaring at her. "But at least I know what it's like to fly on quality equipment. Have you ever even taken an old Shooting Star out for a spin?"

"No. I've never flown at all," Hermione admitted, feeling herself blush. "But it's not like I could, I only found out about all this a few weeks ago."

The little knot of Slytherin first years froze, forming an island of silence in the sea of noise throughout the Great Hall. Draco was staring at her in shock while Tracy, who had been sitting companionably close to Hermione, began to edge away.

"You grew up... muggle?" Draco asked.

"Yes," Hermione snapped, upset by the reaction to the news, "my parents are dentists. Muggles."

A ripple of shock ran through her classmates, as they actually recoiled away from her before turning to discuss the situation amongst themselves. Hermione couldn't hear everything they were saying, but she got the gist of it.

"A muggleborn in Slytherin? This should be amusing," Blaise Zabini, the last boy to be sorted, commented with a sardonic grin.

"Ugh, the sorting hat has gone as crazy as the Headmaster." Pansy Parkinson said, her face scrunched up as if she had just smelled something foul.

"My father says Dumbledore gets worse and worse every year, but this just tears it!" Draco said, just before Hermione brought her hand down on the table with a sharp crack, temporarily silencing the other Slytherins.

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here!" Hermione said, glaring around the table. "I belong here just as much as the rest of you, you'll see."

None of her classmates said anything in response, shaking their heads before returning to their meals. As the momentary flash of anger that had prompted her outburst faded away, Hermione felt as if an icy hand was wrapped around her insides. These people were supposed to be her family for the next seven years?

ooOoo

The next morning a pair of prefects gathered the first year Slytherins together in the common room. None of the younger students seemed inclined to talk, which suited Hermione just fine. After the revelation of her muggle heritage, she had yet to hear a friendly word from any of her house mates.

Hermione had never imagined that entering a whole new magical world also entailed confronting a whole new kind of prejudice. It still seemed sort of surreal to her-as if she woke up one morning in a world that virulently discriminated against people who part their hair on the left. It hurt, of course, to have any group of people looking down on her, but Hermione's primary reaction was bafflement.

She could understand wizards looking down on muggles. Not that she condoned that kind of thinking, but the simple fact was that wizards could do magic and muggles can't. It would be easy enough to build a theory of racial superiority on top of something like that, but where was the sense in extending it to muggleborn wizards? Hermione could perform magic at least as well as anybody else her age. Or at least she thought she could-Hermione made a mental note to go over her charms book again as soon as she had a free moment.

"All right, firsties, listen up," Arnold Parkinson called out. Hermione immediately focused on the fifth year prefect, who was glaring at the first year Slytherins with an intense look on his face.

"The Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin, so I'm sure you'll all be fine," Jennifer Nott said. The other fifth year prefect smiled at them, but there was a little bit of an edge to her expression.

"The most important thing to understand is that Slytherin is a house of winners," Arnold said. "Losers always whine about playing fair and trying their best. Winners go home with the House Cup. Whatever it takes."

"The second thing to remember," Arnold continued, "is that in pursuit of your goals, everything is permitted... as long as you don't get caught."

"And let's be honest," Jennifer said, smoothly cutting in. "You firsties don't have any idea how to get away with anything, and you're not really in a position to help Slytherin out a whole lot. So you guys should really focus on not screwing things up for the rest of us."

"Right," Arnold said, nodding. "And on that note, the third thing to remember is this: you're not going to like everybody here, and that's fine. But any problem you have with another Slytherin, stays in Slytherin. None of the other houses like us much, and the last thing we need is to show off a weakness to everybody else."

Hermione found the whole talk a little bit disconcerting, but also oddly reassuring. Keep her head down, follow the rules, and earn points for Slytherin. She could do that.

She tried to keep that thought foremost in her mind as the prefects led them all to breakfast together, and her house mates broke into conversation that conspicuously excluded her. And when they sat down for breakfast, and nobody sat down beside her or addressed her throughout the meal. She could do this.

Transfiguration class was a relief. Hermione had always preferred the structured environment of the classroom to the labyrinth of social interactions with her peers, a preference that was only enhanced when all of her "peers" seemed determined to ignore her. Class stared off with a bang, as Professor McGonagall demonstrated two spectacular pieces of transfiguration-transforming herself into her cat, and her desk into an enormous pig-before setting the class to the relatively modest task of transforming matchsticks into needles.

Hermione was glad that the matchstick proved as easy to transform as the one she had used at home. She gratefully accepted two points for Slytherin-the first time anybody had said her name since dinner last night-and spent the rest of the class period working on creating steadily more intricate needles. From time to time she would glance over at Pansy Parkinson. The Slytherin queen bee had taken the seat next to her, and seemed to believe the key to proper transfiguration lay in vigorous wand movements. She nearly knocked her matchstick off the table a couple of times but was no closer to transforming it at the end of class than she had been at the start.

Hermione left the room feeling pretty pleased with herself. She was keeping up with her peers in terms of magical ability, and she even earned a couple of points for her house. Unfortunately the only acknowledgement she received for her success came in the form of an "accidental" bump from Pansy once the group of Slytherins was out in the hallway that sent Hermione stumbling and allowed Pansy to take what apparently was the place of honor walking alongside Draco.

Hermione glared at her classmates and wrestled her temper back under control. It was going to take a while, but she would prove she belonged in Slytherin, somehow.

ooOoo

Hermione woke on Friday morning feeling a definite sense of anticipation. Friday would be the day of their first Potions class, their first chance to experience a class taught by their head of house. Professor Snape was a distant and intimidating figure to the Slytherin first years, and Hermione hoped that impressing him in class would help pave the way to her acceptance within Slytherin.

Potions class was also their first class that was shared with Gryffindor. Hermione was looking forward to seeing how Neville Longbottom was doing. He had seemed so lost on the train, she was worried that he would be totally overwhelmed at Hogwarts. It would also be nice to have a conversation with somebody who seemed to look up to her after enduring a week of general disdain.

Hermione's good mood lasted right up until she put on her shoes and felt a sharp pain in her big toe. Yelping in surprise, she yanked off her shoe and carefully felt around her shoe until she removed a needle that had been stowed away inside.

"You really must be a transfiguration prodigy, putting a needle in your shoe like that." Pansy said, before turning to lead a giggling group of Slytherin girls down to breakfast.

Hermione glared impotently at Pansy's departing back, then turned her attention to her toe. Discovering that her sock was now stained with blood, she bandaged her toe and changed socks before she headed off down the hallway on her own, stewing all the while.

When she reached the Great Hall, Hermione stalked over to where Pansy was sitting, poking an accusing finger in her face and interrupting her breakfast.

"I may come from a muggle household," Hermione hissed, "but when it comes to transfiguration you may as well be a muggle."

Hermione spun on her heel and made her way back down the table to an open seat. Before she had taken three steps she felt the impact of a piece of food on her back. Turning around, she was dimly aware of a piece of toast falling off of her robe to hit the floor before her vision narrowed down to the smirking visage of Pansy Parkinson. Hermione took a step forward, but before she could take her revenge she was bustled out of the Great Hall by the irresistible force of Jennifer Nott. She caught a glimpse of Arnold Parkinson taking hold of his sister before the door swung closed and cut off her view.

"What part of 'problems in Slytherin stay in Slytherin' was so hard to understand?" Jennifer asked, her arms crossed over her chest as she glared down at Hermione.

"She's the one who started throwing food!" Hermione protested.

"And she's catching hell for it from her brother," Jamie replied, "but there's a time and a place to pick fights-and the Great Hall is never the right place. Could you imagine if Professor Snape had walked in on that little scene?"

Hermione paled as she thought of the possibility of Professor Snape's first impression of her coming in the middle of the food fight. The anger that had been driving her was snuffed out by the sudden flash of fear, and Hermione looked down at the ground. The bullying was starting to escalate now, and it was hard to imagine things getting better any time soon.

Jennifer sensed the change in Hermione's mood and sighed. She pulled out her wand and knelt down to meet Hermione's eyes.

"Hey, nobody's perfect. That would be boring anyways," Jennifer said. "As long as you guys stay in line from now on, things'll be fine. Let me take care of this for you."

With that, Jennifer gave her wand a brief flourish before tapping Hermione's robe. The jam from Pansy's toast seemed to leap off of her robes, forming a small pile on the floor. Hermione, who hadn't even noticed the stain, stared wide-eyed at the practical bit of magic.

"How did you do that?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, that's the Impervius charm," Jennifer replied. "You guys will learn that soon enough."

"Isn't that for waterproofing?" Hermione asked. "How can you use it for cleaning like that?"

Jennifer gave Hermione a surprised look as she stood. She took a moment to brush out her robes before replying.

"It's good to know at least one of you firsties is hitting the books. The trick is-well, magic is more than just wand-waving and incantations, you know?" Jennifer said. "Your intent guides the spell. When you get enough practice at it you can even bend a spell to do something a little different. So the impervius charm usually makes your clothes repel foreign objects, but if you focus right when you cast it it will also repel dirt that's already there."

Hermione could feel her eyes widening as she gazed up at the older girl. That kind of casual sophistication was exactly what she wanted-she was brought out of her musing when Jennifer chuckled and ruffled Hermione's hair.

"Don't worry, you've got plenty of time to learn stuff like that," Jennifer said. "For now, you need to make sure you get to your potions class on time."

Hermione yelped and ran off to the dungeons, breakfast forgotten in light of her fear of angering Professor Snape. She was fortunate enough to slide into class and take a seat next to Millicent Bulstrode just before the last of the Gryffindors trickled into the classroom.

No sooner had the last students taken their seats than the door swept open with a clatter, and Severus Snape swept into the room. He certainly had more of a flair for the dramatic than their other professors, and Hermione found herself on the edge of her seat with a mixture of fear and anticipation as he waxed rhapsodic about the art of potion making.

Her fear was only intensified when Snape started peppering Harry Potter with questions while taking roll, only to be allayed as she realized she knew the answers. She raised her hand as soon as Harry failed to answer the first question, but Snape didn't call on her until he had finished his interrogation of Harry.

"Yes, Miss Granger?" Snape asked. He sounded a little irritated, but she wasn't go to let something like that deter her from answering.

"Aconite and monkshood are the same plant, sir," Hermione said. "A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, and asphodel and wormwood combine to make the Draught of Living Death."

"Thank you, Miss Granger, I know." Snape's dismissive tone was not what Hermione expected after she gave the right answer, and he declined to award Slytherin any points before turning to the board and giving the instructions for the Boil Cure potion.

Hermione suppressed her disappointment and got to work. Fortunately, for all that Millicent avoided her in between classes, she seemed to realize that letting Hermione run the show in the classroom was just common sense. There was a bit of a dodgy moment when Neville's cauldron melted, almost causing Hermione to drop the nettles into their potion a little early, but she recovered and they were ultimately rewarded with the pink smoke that was an indicator of a perfectly brewed Boil Cure.

Snape observed their potion briefly before moving on without comment. He awarded them no points. Snape in fact didn't award any points to anybody, although he did take points away for some of the more pathetic efforts. When he dismissed the class Hermione realized she wouldn't get a chance to talk to Neville after all-he had gone to the Hospital Wing after his cauldron was destroyed-and she made a spur of the moment decision to try talking to Harry.

She and Harry hadn't exactly become friends on the Hogwarts Express, but he had at least been friendly, which was more than she could say for her housemates. She had some vague idea of building on that connection as she approached Harry, but as soon as he saw her he turned away. Hermione was surprised by his reaction, and was even more surprised when Ron fixed her with a vicious glare.

"Come to gloat about class?" Ron asked. "I bet Snape fed you the answers ahead of time, you cheating snake."

"He gave everyone the answers Weasley, when he told us what book to buy," Draco Malfoy cut in, then paused as if a thought had just occurred to him. "You... _were_ able to afford your books, right?"

Hermione stared at the scene in front of her. She had been shocked by Ron's hostile attitude, and even more surprised to have Draco leap to her defense. It was almost like she had a friend... or, she realized with a sinking feeling, as if Draco was showing his Slytherin solidarity. Hermione turned her back on the budding argument and headed back to the common room, alone.

ooOoo

The next week settled into a routine. Hermione spent as much of her free time as possible in the library, continued to perform at the top of her classes, and continued to be shunned by her fellow Slytherins. It was a little lonely, but Hermione reminded herself that she had gotten through eleven years with books as her only friends, she could surely manage another now that she had books and magic.

Her house mates didn't ignore her all the time, of course, as from time to time they would rouse themselves to pick on her. Chastened by the lecture she had received from her brother, Pansy didn't risk any further pranks that rose to the level of physical injury, but it was not at all uncommon for Hermione to find that her school supplies had been hidden throughout the dorm.

Hermione was the last student to arrive for potions on Friday-having had to spend an inordinate amount of time locating her potions textbook-when she found that the only open seat was adjacent to Neville Longbottom. Looking around the classroom and saw that all of the students were paired up with their housemates except for Pansy, who was sharing a table with Lavender Brown. Pansy took a break from chatting with Lavender to smirk triumphantly at Hermione. Hermione took a deep breath and gathered herself before walking over to sit next to Neville.

"Hello, Hermio-oof!" Neville's greeting was cut off as Hermione grabbed him by the front of the robes and yanked him forward until his eyes were only a foot away from her intense glare.

"Here's how this is going to work," Hermione said. "You will prepare the ingredients, and then place them on the table well away from the cauldron."

"But I-" Neville said, only to be silenced by another yank on his robes.

"You will not put anything in the cauldron. You will not even bring your hands near the cauldron." Hermione continued. "You will stay out of my way. You will not ruin our potion. Do you understand?"

"Yes." Neville said, a little choked off by Hermione's grip on his robes. She released him and he sat back gratefully, still looking a little shell-shocked.

Hermione actually felt a lot better after her outburst. She felt a little bad about taking all of her anger out on Neville, but there was no denying the fact that she had been driving herself crazy keeping it all bottled up inside.

Fortunately, Neville was able to follow her directions and avoid spoiling their potion. It meant that Hermione had to do all the work for the two of them, but it was hardly the first time she had to do all of the work for a group project. By the end of the class they had a cauldron full of textbook-perfect burn salve. Hermione gave a little huff of satisfaction and looked up to see Professor Snape eyeing her with an inscrutable expression on his face.

"I couldn't help but notice that your division of labor was rather uneven, Miss Granger," Snape said.

"We split things up so that, uh," Hermione said, "we were each able to play to our strengths."

"Perhaps," Snape said, taking a sample of their potion for grading. "But next week I expect to see a more even allocation of tasks when you two work together."

Hermione stared at the back of his head as he stalked back to the front of the classroom. She had to work with Neville again. She even had to let him touch the cauldron. This was bad.

"Neville!" Hermione snapped. He turned away from the window he had been staring out of for the past half hour to look at her. "We should meet tomorrow to work on your potions making."

"Um, I don't know..." Neville trailed off when Hermione leaned forward, her eyes glinting dangerously.

"Let me rephrase: we will be meeting tomorrow to work on your potions making." Hermione said.

"Ok," Neville squeaked, before turning to flee the classroom.

Hermione sighed. Keeping Neville from ruining her potions grade was going to be a full time job in itself. On the other hand, their little tutoring session tomorrow was going to be the closest thing to hanging out a friend that she had experienced since entering Hogwarts.

ooOoo

Hermione was pleasantly surprised when Neville met her in the Great Hall after breakfast the next day. She was less pleasantly surprised when he was followed by Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. She raised an eyebrow at Neville as he drew near.

"They're, um, with me." Neville said, blushing slightly.

"We're not letting Neville wander off alone with a Slytherin!" Ron said, positioning himself protectively between Hermione and Neville. "You might render him down for potions ingredients or something."

"Really?" Hermione asked, then shrugged. "Well, from what I remember, you two could use a little remedial potions instruction yourselves, so you may as well tag along."

Hermione turned before Ron could formulate a response and led the little group to their study area, a room she had learned about from a Slytherin prefect. Located on the second floor, the room used to be used for Potions classes before Snape started teaching them. It had work areas, running water to help clean out cauldrons, and the storage closet still had a stockpile of commonly used ingredients preserved under stasis charms.

Hermione gestured at the workstation she had set up, an empty cauldron over an unlit brazier. Next to the cauldron were the usual array of ingredient preparation tools, along with Hermione's textbook.

"Ok, Neville, the Headache Reduction Potion is what we're probably going to be doing in class on Monday," Hermione said. "Let's see what you can do."

Neville moved with some trepidation to begin working on the potion. Hermione perched on the desk in front of the workstation, watching him intently. Ron and Harry drifted to observation posts that were a little further out of range of a potions mishap.

Neville found the page with the directions for the Headache Cure potion on them and went to the back of the room to fill his cauldron with water. Returning, he moved to light the brazier but paused when Hermione cleared her throat.

"Is that the right thing to do right now, Neville?" Hermione asked.

"Bringing the water to a boil is the first step of making the potion." Neville replied, slightly indignant. Hermione reached out and slammed the textbook shut.

"What's the second step?" Hermione asked.

"Adding the, um, bubotuber pus?" Neville said, clearly unsure.

"And the third step?" She asked.

"I don't know." Neville admitted.

"You don't know? What if you needed powdered bicorn horn? Did you have time to use your mortar and pestle before they needed to be added? What if you had to chop up some caterpillars?" Hermione said, bringing her hand down on the table in emphasis. "You never start on a potion until you know each and every step! Otherwise you're going to have to rush from step to step, and rushing is how you make mistakes."

Hermione sighed, then pulled an empty notebook from her satchel and handed it over to Neville.

"Copy every step from the textbook into the notebook," Hermione instructed. "Then prepare all of the ingredients you will need. Then start brewing the potion."

Neville followed her directions and for a time the only sound in the room was the scratching of quill on paper. When he finished with the directions he made his way back to the supply cupboard to retrieve the potion components. Hermione was glad to see that Neville had managed to pick out rather healthy looking specimens of each ingredient, and he had a fairly deft hand with the knife as he chopped them down to size.

Ingredients prepared, Neville began the process of brewing the potion. His timing wasn't precise, but he made a fairly good go of it, at least for the first six steps or so of the process. Hermione started when Neville grabbed a giant handful of valerian root-the recipe called for a pinch to be added-but relaxed slightly as he held the handful over the cauldron with one hand while reaching in to grab a pinch with the other. After a brief moment of reflection on the likely result of a valerian overdose, Hermione called out Neville's name sharply.

Neville jerked to attention, dropping the handful of roots into the cauldron. His potion, which had been a nice lavender color, turned a sickly green and began clotting up. A moment later it was a rock solid alien-looking mess in his cauldron.

"Tell me," Hermione said, "what went wrong there?"

"Too much valerian root?" Neville said.

"And why did you add too much valerian root?" Hermione asked.

"You startled me!" Neville said.

Hermione stared at him for a moment, but no further response was forthcoming. "Clean out your cauldron and see if you can think of another answer."

Neville's shoulders slumped as he gathered up the cauldron and moved to the back of the room. At the same time, Ron and Harry moved forward to confront Hermione.

"You just yelled at him until he screwed up!" Ron said accusingly. "This whole thing is just an excuse to pick on Neville."

"Do you think Professor Snape is going to go easy on Neville on Monday?" Hermione asked.

"Snape is a greasy git!" Ron replied.

"It doesn't matter what he is, he's in charge of our potions classes." Hermione replied. "Look, if Neville can't get these accidents under control he could very easily send me to the hospital wing-or worse, lower my grade."

"Wait, how would that be worse?" Harry asked, bemused.

"Believe me," Hermione replied, her eyes narrowing in an unconscious imitation of their potions instructor, "it would be worse for Neville."

Ron and Harry bristled at that, but before they could start another round of argument Neville stepped in to play peacemaker. Once he had convinced them that Hermione was just trying to help him out he turned back to her with a determined expression on his face.

"I think I figured it out," Neville said. "I shouldn't have grabbed that whole handful when all I needed was a pinch."

"Right," Hermione said. "Don't hold anything over a cauldron if you don't want it going into the potion."

With that, Hermione had Neville take another go at making the headache cure. It took a few more tries, but he finally managed to produce something passable. Hermione was pretty sure that with her to help out in class, they would be able to produce a potion that was up to her usual standard.

Hermione was heartened by the fact that her potions grade was no longer in imminent danger, and the grateful smile Neville gave her before they split up more than made up for all the work she had had to put in preparing for his lesson. Hearing Ron moan when he realized he had spent the better part of Saturday studying potions was just icing on the cake.

ooOoo

Life continued on much as it had before, as Hermione was easily able to replace some of her library time with her potions tutoring for Neville. Harry and Ron stopped coming after the first session, though Hermione wasn't sure if it was because they trusted her or if they just wanted to avoid anything smacking of extra work in potions. Neville was never going to develop into an expert brewer, but under Hermione's guidance he was at least able to avoid disaster when he was brewing, and avoid dragging down her grade when they were working together.

Hermione continued to receive top marks in all of her homework, answer every question in class-she took particular joy in answering questions Pansy missed-and earn points for Slytherin (in every class but History of Magic, where the professor scarcely seemed aware of any student's presence, and Potions, where Professor Snape had yet to award points to any first year student). However, none of that seemed to change the attitudes of her fellow Slytherins, and the petty parade of pranks continued. It was frustrating, but she tried not to let it get her down.

Hermione was feeling pretty good as she woke up one October morning, as the first class of the day would be Transfiguration. She was doing well in all her classes, of course, but transfiguration was her favorite. It was the class where she felt the most connection to the material, as well as the instructor. For all that she was a Slytherin and Professor McGonagall was the head of Gryffindor, Hermione really liked the professor, and she felt like she had a bit of a soft spot for Hermione as well.

She noted with a frown as she returned from her morning ablutions that her roommates had already left the dorm. That was usually a bad sign, and a quick search revealed that indeed, Hermione's shoes were missing. She heaved an exasperated sigh and donned the rest of her uniform before starting to search for her shoes. Her roommates should know by now that she knew where all the best hiding places were, this kind of thing wasted as much of their time as it did hers.

Hermione was not feeling so sanguine after a half hour of searching. She had looked everywhere that her shoes might conceivably be in the first year dorm, and she was forced to conclude that they weren't in the room. They might be in the Slytherin common room somewhere, or anywhere in the castle, it didn't really matter-she only had half an hour until class started, and no way to find her shoes before then.

Fighting down a surge of panic, Hermione reminded herself that she was a witch now-she didn't need to limit herself to mundane means of securing footwear. Pulling out an extra pair of socks, she bit her lip in thought. In theory, the general inanimate to inanimate spell should do what she wanted, but she wasn't sure she could pull this off.

Fixing a picture of her shoes in her mind, Hermione made the requisite wand motion and incantation before tapping her socks. They twitched, before transforming into a pair of socks made out of patent leather. She frowned and dispelled the transformation before pulling out her text book.

Flipping through the pages, she located the section she wanted. There were modifications that had to be made to the wand motion both due to the size of the transfiguration and the complexity. She gave a few practice twirls before she was confident in the motion and tried again on the socks.

This time they reformed into... shoe-like objects. Hermione frowned. They certainly weren't going to pass a uniform inspection, but on the other hand she just needed a stopgap until she could find her real shoes. And she was running out of time before Transfiguration began. She shrugged and put on the "shoes" before hobbling off to class as quickly as she could.

The look of surprise on Pansy's face when Hermione entered the classroom was worth all of the pain she had suffered on the walk there. Still, Hermione was grateful to take a seat and relieve the pressure on her feet. Millicent-she and Hermione had built up a decent rapport in non-Potions classes that consisted mostly of sitting next to each other and maintaining a friendly silence-looked like she wanted to say something, but before she could Professor McGonagall showed up to begin the day's lesson.

A half hour later, Hermione was distracted from watching her classmate's attempts to transform teacups into teapots-her own effort long complete-by a twisting sensation on her feet. Glancing under the table, she saw that she was now wearing two pairs of socks, rather than socks and shoes. She thought about trying to take off her socks and renew the transfiguration, but she didn't like her chances of sneaking something like that past Professor McGonagall. After some internal debate on the issue, she was unable to come up with anything better than trying to bluff it out-how often to people look at other people's feet, anyway?

When class was dismissed Hermione gathered up her things and tried to lose herself in the middle of the pack of students exiting the classroom, ignoring the sensation of stone under her feet. She was nearly out the door when Pansy trod down hard on her toe. She yelped and instinctively hopped on one foot, cradling the injured toe in her hands. She immediately realized her mistake, but it was too late.

"Miss Granger! What on earth are you wearing on your feet?" McGonagall asked.

"Socks?" Hermione replied, bracing herself.

"Hmm," McGonagall said, glacing around the room in a knowing fashion, "I don't recall granting you any kind of uniform exemption. Detention, my office, at seven o'clock tonight."

Hermione felt her stomach drop down past her stocking clad feet. For all the abuse she had suffered from fellow students, her academic record had never been less than perfect. She had never had any kind of formal reprimand on her record, had never given a teacher any reason to write anything but glowing comments on her report cards. Now all of that was gone, just like that.

She nodded to McGonagall to acknowledge the detention, then gathered herself and walked back down to the Slytherin dormitory. Sitting on her bed, she drew the curtains closed around herself and tried very hard not to cry. She was still sitting there an hour later when the message came that Professor Snape wanted to see her.

ooOoo

Severus Snape would be the first to admit that he was not good with children. He didn't like them. He didn't like having to teach them, and he especially didn't like having to supervise them in a potions laboratory. If he could lock incoming first years in a box and put off teaching them until they were eighteen and at least a little sensible, he would do it in a heartbeat.

He would also admit-although a little less freely-that he could never have lasted as head of any house but Slytherin. He just didn't have it in him to be nurturing. Fortunately, Slytherins by and large did not need to be nurtured. The house was a snake pit of personal politics, family politics, and always competition, competition, competition. Snape made sure things didn't get out of hand, let the parents know when their offspring needed a little pep talk, and for the most part the house ran itself.

Until Granger came along. Unable to fit into the system, and too stubborn to subordinate herself to it. It was throwing off the usual first year dynamic.

As if summoned by his thoughts, there was a knock on the door. Snape opened it to admit the first year who had been causing so much trouble. Hermione kept her eyes firmly fixed on the floor as she walked in, obviously upset and equally obvious in trying to hide it.

"You'll be happy to know, Miss Granger," Snape said as he took a seat behind his desk, "that I have spoken to Miss Parkinson. Today's... incident... will not be repeated."

"Thank you, sir." Hermione replied.

Snape frowned slightly. There was none of the usual note of triumph at the downfall of an opponent in her voice. She still appeared as despondent as she had when she walked in. This was exactly the kind of situation where he would usually floo a student's parents, which was of course impossible to do when the parents were a pair of dentists. Snape stifled a sigh and steeled himself: this pep talk was going to have to come from him.

"Is something troubling you, Miss Granger?" Snape asked.

Hermione visibly hesitated and bit her lip, but then the words came pouring out of her in a rush. "Why does everybody care so much that my parents are muggles? I'm just as good a witch as they are-better even, in most classes."

"What you have to understand, Miss Granger, is that Slytherin House values success above all other traits," Snape tried to explain. "Family history, personal charm, personal contacts-all of these things can matter as much or more than sheer magical ability. If you're trying to compete on magical talent alone, it's not enough to be a little bit better than your class-you'd have to be twice as good."

"But still, they all hate me, they pick on me," Hermione said, tears starting to leak from her eyes, "they play pranks on me, why me? Why don't they like me? Why do they attack me all the time?"

The last bit came out as a wail, and Snape was confronted with the sight of an eleven year old girl breaking down in tears in his office. It was not a new experience for him-indeed, he had Pansy Parkinson in a similar state only half an hour ago-but usually he was the one who caused them to break down. To have someone so emotionally vulnerable reach out to him for support was unusual, and frankly a little disconcerting.

"Miss Granger, please control yourself." Snape snapped, and she quieted down from openly sobbing to the occasional sniffle, while Snape gathered his thoughts.

Snape never had understood what made people like other people. Whatever intangible quality caused it, it was something he didn't have. But when it came to what made people single others out for bullying, it was a different story. Snape had spent years as a Death Eater watching the power politics being played in the Inner Circle, and more years watching teenagers maneuver for social standing. Over that time he had learned many things: weakness was provocative, strength was attractive, fear was more reliable than love...

As Snape started explaining human nature to Hermione, he found himself warming to the topic. He hadn't had a chance to lecture to a captive audience about anything besides potions for a while, and Hermione was the one first year he could plausibly believe would be capable of understanding any kind of sophisticated lecture. Although she didn't ask any questions, she seemed to be following along as he explained why one should never do an enemy a small injury. He found himself rambling a little bit, and finally cut himself off when he started to tell an anecdote that had ended with Barty Crouch tortured near to the point of insanity. He cleared his throat and made sure he had her full attention.

"I hope you understand," Snape said, "that you are the only person who can solve your problems."

"Yes, sir," Hermione replied. She hesitated, then asked her question after Snape gestured at her impatiently. "It's just-why is it that you don't like me, sir?"

"What makes you think I don't like you?" Snape asked. He did have a certain disdain for transparent brown-nosing, but he thought he had kept his feelings well-hidden. Not that he was worried about being seen to dislike a muggleborn student, but openly disdaining a Slytherin would be bad form for the head of the house.

"You never award me any points," Hermione said. "All the other professors, when I answer a question or do something right, I earn points for Slytherin."

Well of course he wasn't going to award points to a muggleborn-he did have a certain image to maintain. Fortunately, Snape had long since worked out a standard reply to this kind of inquiry.

"You've followed the directions and recited back information you learned from a book," Snape said, steepling his fingers together. "It takes more than that to earn points from me."

He wasn't sure he liked the speculative gleam in her eyes as he ushered her out of his office, but at least she wasn't crying.

ooOoo


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I am assuming for sake of simplicity that all of the houses have their first year classes on the same day, just not always at the same time. In addition to simplifying my timeline research, this strikes me as the least insane way of ordering it for the teachers, although I agree with everybody else who has tried to do a Hogwarts timetable that there is no sane way to divvy up the work without heavy use of time-turners.

AN2: I know I said I would alternate chapters w/my Sakura fic, but I figure I should stick with the story that's just about writing itself in my head.

ooOoo

Hermione's head was spinning as she left Snape's office and made her way to the Slytherin common room. If she understood him correctly, he had stepped in after Pansy's latest prank not because he wanted to stop her bullying per se, but only because Pansy had crossed the line-apparently the same line the prefects had been talking about, of carrying a prank so far that it exposed cracks within Slytherin.

As long as Pansy kept her pranks on the correct side of that line, she could pick on Hermione without any interference from their head of house. But on the other hand, if Hermione retaliated against Pansy, she could expect a similar amount of leeway in official oversight of her actions.

No authority figure had ever suggested such a thing to Hermione before. Her teachers had always insisted that she was doing the right thing by reporting bullying through the proper channels. Her parents had told her that bullies were just hurting themselves, really, in the long run. Every adult seemed to agree that Hermione would be better off not being drawn into a "cycle of violence."

Of course, it had always been a moot point, back in the muggle world. Hermione wasn't the weakest kid out there, but she was going to be an underdog in most physical confrontations. Professor Snape's blithe assumption that she could look out for herself was a little reassuring, but was more likely a result of the fact that for wizards, the wand was a great equalizer. After all, it didn't really matter how strong somebody was if they were under the full body bind.

Any further musings on the differences between muggles and wizards in the realm of school discipline were put on hold when Hermione entered the common room and saw the clock on the wall. She felt the blood drain from her face as she realized she was going to have to hurry to make it to her detention on time.

One secret passage, two misbehaving staircases, and one (mercifully brief) encounter with Peeves later, Hermione skidded to a halt outside of Professor McGonagall's office and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that the time was 6:59pm. The professor opened her door at precisely seven o'clock and ushered Hermione inside, indicating that she should take a seat.

Hermione took a moment while Professor McGonagall was walking back around her desk to glance around the office. Her overall impression was that it reflected the professor's no-nonsense personality. The furniture-desk, bookshelves, and work table-was all of a sturdy oak construction, and no loose papers cluttered any of the work surfaces. There were two framed certificates on the wall. Hermione couldn't quite read them from where she sat, but one appeared to be a certificate of mastery in transfiguration. The only other wall decoration was a large banner in Gryffindor colors, decorated with small representations of trophies and broomsticks. Each icon was labeled with a year, and Hermione could only assume that they represented House Cups and Quidditch Cups won under McGonagall's tenure. There was a pretty good sized collection of icons, but it had been a few years since one was added.

Her attention was pulled from looking around the office when she heard the soft thud of an object being dropped on the desk in front of her. Turning around, Hermione saw that a pair of socks had been tossed onto the otherwise empty desk. She looked up at Professor McGonagall, confused.

"Well?" McGonagall asked.

"I..." Hermione looked down, embarassed. She hated demonstrating any kind of skill that she had not mastered. It was a trait that had driven her parents crazy when she was learning to write, as she had thrown a fit every time she drew a letter that didn't perfectly match the example in the books. She would never have let an effort like her "shoes" be seen by anybody else if it hadn't been such a desperate situation.

"Miss Granger," McGonagall said, "I can hardly correct your mistakes without seeing what you did wrong."

Looking at the professor and seeing nothing but a sincere desire to help, Hermione reluctantly drew her wand. She rehearsed the wand motion briefly in her mind, before bringing the wand to bear. Focusing so strongly on an image of her shoes that she started feeling a bit of a headache, Hermione cast the modified inanimate-to-inanimate transfiguration spell. The socks twitched, then morphed into a reasonable approximation of a pair of shoes. They weren't quite as shiny as proper patent leather, and the buckle was a gold-colored segment of leather rather than metal, but it was a noticeable improvement over her previous effort.

"Hmm, not bad," McGonagall said, before reaching under her desk and pulling out a strawberry that she placed inside the shoe. "Before we proceed, I want to emphasize that transfiguring clothing is not something to take lightly. In class when your transfiguration failed, it reverted back to its original form. That is the most likely result, but hardly the only possibility."

McGonagall tapped the shoes with her wand, and Hermione flinched back from a fine red mist that fortunately stopped short of her position. She flinched when she saw what now looked like two perfectly flat socks made out of thick leather, crushed strawberry leaking out of the top. Seeing that her point had been made, McGonagall gestured with her wand once more, and two perfectly clean socks once again rested atop her desk.

"I believe this is primarily a problem of trying to run before you can walk," McGonagall said. "Let's start by performing the same spell using transfiguration basics."

Hermione stifled a groan. Transfiguration basics were described in the appendix to the transfiguration textbook as a method of simplifying the visualization required to perform a proper transfiguration. She had been excited to learn about them at first, until she discovered how tedious they were.

Even the simple matchstick to needle transformation, when broken down to the basics, was quite complex-jabs to define the spacial coordinates of the object to be changed, the little waggle that indicated wood, the spiraling motion that signaled a transformation in material, the zigzag that represented metal, followed by the motions that defined the change in shape-instead of a relatively simple wand motion it was twenty seconds of paintstaking work. The payoff was that if you performed the wand motions correctly, the match would transform as long as you kept anything even vaguely needle-like in mind.

She suspected that the process of mastering transfiguration involved replacing more and more complex wand motions with visualization, but even Hermione had her limits. Once she had proven to herself that she could work with the transfiguration basics, she had set them aside as requiring too much effort for too little gain.

"Come now," McGonagall said, smiling a bit at Hermione's reaction, "surely you're not afraid to put in a little extra work to make sure you're performing the spell correctly?"

"Well," Hermione replied, "I'm not sure I could put together the whole transfiguration from basics off the top of my head."

The transformation from socks to shoes was significantly more complicated than the matchstick to needle transformation, and would require correspondingly more complex wand motions. Hermione's hope that this excuse might stand up were dashed when a large tome floated off of a bookshelf at Professor McGonagall's direction and landed on the desk in front of her.

"Then it's fortunate that I have a reference handy," McGonagall said. "I've often thought that students would be better served to build up a solid foundation in the basics before moving on to actual transformations, but most first years won't put in the effort to learn without a tangible result. I'm so glad you've volunteered to test out my theory."

Hermione decided against sharing exactly what she thought of this "volunteer" effort-a one-on-one tutoring session was probably the best result she could hope for from a detention, and a personal lesson from Hogwarts's Transfiguration Professor was a valuable thing. She only wished that it didn't involve quite so much painstaking effort.

ooOoo

Hermione and Neville had developed a comfortable working relationship in the potions lab: she told him what to do, and he did it. Neville was still making decent progress under her tutoring and was almost starting to verge on competence, at least when he was given a chance to work outside of Professor Snape's presence. Hermione was proud that she had helped him improve, and happy that he was no longer endangering her grades. Despite all that, she was still nonplussed when he showed up for their tutoring session the morning after her detention trailing a couple of guests.

"Are you starting up with this 'protect Neville' business again?" Hermione asked, eyeing Ron and Harry with suspicion.

"They never really stopped," Neville said, "Ron asks if you've been doing anything suspicious after every one of these meetings."

Neville sounded a little exasperated at Ron's behavior, and even Harry seemed to think he was taking things a little too far. Ron's face reddened slightly, although he didn't have the sort of raw anger Hermione would expect if he was surprised at his friends' behavior-she suspected this was part of a conversation the Gryffindor boys had had before.

"Always beware Slytherins bearing gifts," Ron said. It sounded like he was quoting something. "That's just common sense."

Hermione started to reply, but Ron cut her off.

"And Harry's told me about _dentists_," he said darkly. "I'm surprised he can stand to be in the same room as you after going through that kind of torture."

Harry was now openly rolling his eyes, and Hermione was pretty sure she heard a long suffering sigh from where Neville was setting up his work station. She was staring at Ron, a little gobsmacked by his ignorance, when a thought occurred to her: was this what she sounded like when she talked about wizard culture? Hermione put the thought away for future consideration and fixed Ron with her best icy glare.

"Dentistry isn't hereditary, Ronald," Hermione said. "And I hardly think-"

Hermione stopped talking when Harry stepped in front of Ron, his hands held up in surrender. She was surprised at his actions, as Harry usually seemed to prefer to stay in the background and let Ron do the talking.

"Hermione, please, we're not here to accuse you of anything," Harry said. "The truth is, we need your help with potions. The last few classes, our grades have been pretty bad."

Behind him Ron nodded sheepishly, and Hermione felt her eyes narrow as she considered the request. It was hardly a new situation-several times in the past previously standoffish classmates had changed their tune when they realized Hermione could help them with some critical piece of classwork. Those "friendships" never lasted, and she didn't really feel like playing the role of the homework helper once more.

"Neville is my lab partner, and he's treated me like a decent human being," Hermione said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why should I be helping you two out, exactly?"

Harry stared at Hermione in surprise. His green eyes looked huge behind his glasses, and he gave off such a wounded puppy vibe that Hermione had to fight down a sudden impulse to give him a hug and promise that he would be all right. Behind him Ron had flushed red in anger and was muttering something about Slytherins. Surprisingly, it was Neville who broke the impasse.

"I'm sure they didn't really mean all those things they said before they got to know you," Neville said. "Right, guys?"

Hermione saw a flicker of understanding cross Harry's face, followed by a look of determination.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," Harry said. "I shouldn't have thought you were a bad person just because you're in Slytherin."

Both of them turned to look expectantly at Ron. After a moment he took a deep breath and relaxed his hands, which had been clenched into fists.

"I'm sorry too," Ron said.

He didn't sound particularly sincere, but it was better than Hermione had expected. Honestly, she wasn't in a position where she could really kick them out of the room, and it wasn't like she could stop helping Neville. If she could get them to look at her as a person and not just a homework dispenser, that was victory enough.

"Fine," Hermione replied. "Set up your cauldron and let's get to work."

As Ron and Harry prepared their workstation, Hermione started asking Neville a few questions about the Blister Reduction Potion. She wanted to make sure he had done the reading before starting his brewing-Neville was usually pretty good about that sort of thing now, but she felt it was better to be safe than sorry. She had also recently started using this question and answer session to focus Neville on potential trouble spots in the brewing potion. Doing the reading wasn't enough if you didn't understand what the book was trying to tell you.

She smiled when Neville correctly identified the signs of too much heat being applied during the reduction stage of the potion, and then blinked in surprise when she glanced over at the other two. They were both staring at Neville, jaws agape. Harry recovered his voice first.

"Where'd you learn all that, Nev?" Harry asked.

"It's in the book," Neville mumbled, blushing.

"What? Where?" Harry asked.

"What do you mean, where?" Hermione asked. "It's right after the brewing instructions."

"We're supposed to read that?" Harry asked, then recoiled at the glare Hermione turned on him. "I mean, I know we're supposed to read that stuff when Snape gives us essays to write, but otherwise I didn't think we needed to."

"Yeah," Ron said, jumping in. "We follow the directions, so we ought to get the right potion. We wanted you to tell us why it's not working."

"I don't believe this," Hermione said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You've been treating your potions text like a cookbook."

"Well," Harry said, sounding genuinely puzzled, "it has a list of recipes describing how to combine ingredients to get the proper result, so yeah."

"Ok," Hermione said, "the last step of the Boil Cure Potion is to stir five times clockwise. How fast do you stir it?"

"Kind of a normal stirring speed?" Harry said.

"How do you know if you're going too fast or too slow? How do you fix it if you do?" Hermione asked. "You're not scrambling eggs here. You're creating a precise combination of magical ingredients to produce a result that violates the laws of nature! There are any number of tiny variations in how people will interpret the same directions, you have to know how to account for those things."

"Ok, ok. We'll be better about doing the reading," Harry said. "But for now could we just work on the potion we're doing tomorrow?"

For a moment, Hermione was tempted. Walking them step by step through the potion so they could repeat it tomorrow was the quickest way to help improve their potions grade. However, it smacked a little too much of the homework-for-tolerance bargain that she had sworn to avoid. She was willing to offer advice to somebody who was genuinely trying to improve at potions brewing, but she drew the line at having somebody else act as a pair of hands while she walked them through a potion.

"If you want my help, you'll do the reading now," Hermione said. "You can both get through chapter one while I help Neville with his potion, and then we can talk about the Boil Cure Potion."

"Hey! You said you would help us," Ron protested.

"I said I would _help_. Not that I would do your work for you," Hermione replied. "Neville is putting in the effort to get better at brewing potions himself, not just asking me to improve his grade. If you want my help, you ought to do the same."

Left unsaid was the fact that Neville was tied to her by Snape's insistence that they partner together, and at least part of his effort was motivated by fear of what might happen if he hurt her grades. Even if he had originally attended out of fear, he really had been putting in work to get better. Having Ron and Harry act like she could just tell them how to get a better grade without any real effort on their part cheapened that.

"Fine, fine," Ron said, flipping back to the first page of his book with ill-concealed displeasure. "Just what I wanted to do today, more bloody reading."

Hermione elected to ignore Ron's language, instead focusing on Neville as he worked through the first few steps of the potion. Eventually he reached a point where the potion had to be left to simmer for a while, and she decided it was safe for her to work on her own project. Moving away from the boys' workstations, she pulled a match out of her pocket and set it on the table.

Her work with Professor McGonagall had been difficult, but it had paid off. Once she had finished the rather extended process of translating the socks to shoes transfiguration into the basics, the transformation had gone off without a hitch-other than the two minutes of wand waving needed to produce the result. With that down, the next step was to work on reducing the amount of wand motion needed, which was an interesting process. Professor McGonagall had explained that while it was important to visualize the end result of the spell, it was equally important to visualize the process of transition from one form to the other.

Of course, there was no natural process of transition from socks to shoes, or matches to needles. Instead, there was the magical process that took place as guided by the transfiguration basics, the fundamental building blocks of transfiguration. Having broken the sock transfiguration down to that level, she found that it was relatively straightforward to focus on that framework while reducing her wand movements.

She also had a better understanding of what was going on with the additional wand movements she had incorporated on her own-each motion encoded a standard series of ten or twenty of the basics, and knowing that made it easier to build out the overall structure of the spell. Hermione was hardly at the level of Professor McGonagall, who could transform a whole desk into an animal with a simple tap of her wand, but she had made real progress over the course of the detention.

Now she was trying to go the other direction. Instead of working on managing a more difficult transformation through difficult wand work, she wanted to see if she could simplify the wand work on an easy transformation. Transforming a match into a needle took a little bit of a wiggle and jab motion. Hermione stared at the matchstick and concentrated.

The wiggle was a common motion for the transformation of wood into metal, encapsulating what would otherwise be eight separate motions. Hermione focused on the direction provided by those eight motions and jabbed her wand at the matchstick. She frowned when she saw the result: a metal matchstick.

Hermione reverted the matchstick again and tried again, this time splitting her attention between the guidance usually provided by the wand motion and visualizing her final result. It felt strange, like trying to pat her head and rub her stomach at the same time with her brain, but it paid off. A perfectly formed needle sat where her matchstick had been.

She smiled in satisfaction. Even before coming to Hogwarts, she had never understood the aversion that her peers had for homework. Homework was a chance to learn something you didn't know before, or to improve on some skill. That was how she felt about learning things like math, and the feeling was even stronger when it came to magic. She had a hard time understanding why somebody would want to skive off instead of learning how to violate the fundamental laws of the universe.

Still, Professor Snape had made it clear that mastering her homework wasn't going to be enough. If she was going to be twice as good as her classmates at magic, she was going to have to go beyond the material to learn things like this.

Thinking of Professor Snape's advice, Hermione was reminded of the fact that she didn't really know how to get back at Pansy for her malicious pranks. And when she didn't know how to do something, the best thing to do was ask an expert.

"Hey Ron," Hermione asked, startling him into looking up from his book at her, "your twin brothers were the ones that charmed all of Slytherins' robes red and gold last week, right?"

"Ye-I mean, I wouldn't know anything about that," Ron said, shifting in his seat.

"I'm not angry," Hermione said, waving her hand dismissively. "I just wanted to talk to them. I have a little issue I think they can help me with."

"I don't know," Ron said, "they're not big on hanging out with first years."

"But they'd meet with me as a favor to you, right?" Hermione asked. "And you'd ask them as a favor for me, right?"

"Why would I-" Ron said, then looked around at the little potions study group that Hermione was leading, and slumped down. "I guess, yeah."

"Thank you, Ronald." Hermione said.

She wasn't sure it was a great idea to attract the attention of the school's most notorious pranksters-and Gryffindors, even-but it wasn't like she was spoiled for choice. She could hardly ask any of the older Slytherins for advice. Besides, she only knew them through the Hogwarts rumor mill, which was surely exaggerrated-how bad could they really be?

ooOoo

Over the next few days Hermione adjusted her routine. She had already read the course books, of course, but she had been re-reading the relevant chapters a couple time before each class; she cut back to simply skimming each part to refresh her memory before class. She also cut down on her essay revision: for each assignment she would write out her essay, wait a day, and then revise it. This replaced the multiple rounds of revision that she had been doing. She used the time thus freed up to conduct more practical research and refine her ability to use magic.

Hermione was spending a lazy Sunday afternoon in the library reading "Formidable Fortifications" when she was interrupted by a stranger sliding into the seat to her left. And another stranger taking the seat to her right. Glancing from side to side, she was confronted by the mirrored images of the infamous Weasley Twins.

"After hearing ickle Ronniekins describe you," the twin on her left said, "we figured you'd be 10 feet tall, breathe fire-"

"And shoot laser beams out of your eyes," the twin on her right finished. "We never thought you'd just be some innocent looking little firstie."

"Hello?" Hermione said, her voice coming out a little squeakier than she would have liked.

"Of course," the twin on her left continued as if she hadn't spoken, "everybody knows it's the innocent looking Slytherins that are the most dangerous."

"Very true, brothern mine," the twin on her right said. "That's why we decided to meet you here-"

"Because even if you are looking to trick some poor, innocent, handsome Gryffindors," the twin on her left clutched his hands dramatically over his heart, "everybody knows one thing about Hermione Granger-"

"She's not going to get herself kicked out of the library!" The twin on her right finished, hunching over slightly as Madam Pince glared at him for raising his voice.

"What do you want?" Hermione asked, slightly dizzied by the conversational tennis match going on around her.

"Now, now, that's what we're here to ask you," the left twin said. "Why is it that you requested the presence of the dashing, brilliant, handsome, wise-"

"-and handsome, Fred and George Weasley?" the right twin asked.

"I have a little bit of a pranking problem," Hermione admitted.

"We don't usually take requests," the left twin said, "but I suppose we could make an exception for the girl who convinced Ron to crack open a book."

"Of course," the right twin said, "we'll need your help to get into the Slytherin common room, and-"

"No, no!" Hermione said, wincing at the glare she received from Madam Pince. "I'll take care of my own problems. I just wanted to consult you for some advice. And maybe some supplies."

She didn't know precisely where the line was in terms of behavior that would draw an official response, but she was sure dragging the Weasley twins into an intra-Slytherin dispute was well past it. Besides which, having other people fight her battles was hardly the way to win respect from anybody. Hermione shook her head at the thought, and then did a double take when she saw the deerstalker cap perched on the head of the twin to her left.

"Consulting pranksters, you say?" He asked. "I could see that."

To Hermione's surprise, the other twin didn't say anything, staring with disapproval at his brother. When he spoke, his voice no longer carried a joking tone.

"Where did you get the hat, Fred?" He asked.

"What-hey, don't start this in front of the Slytherin," Fred responded defensively.

"No, this is important," the other twin, apparently George, insisted. "We had a deal. I don't do anything to hurt your chances with Angelina Johnson, and you knock it off with the prop comedy."

"Come on, this hat is a classic." Fred protested.

"It's demeaning, is what it is. We're thirteen now, we should be able to get by without that kind of crutch," George replied. "Or do you want me wandering into the wrong locker room by mistake after our next practice?"

"Fine, fine," Fred grumbled, and Hermione blinked. The hat had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Fred looked at her apologetically. "Sorry you had to see that."

"That's quite all right," Hermione said. She figured the best way to deal with the twins was to just go with the flow.

"Now about your problem," George said, and Hermione did a double take after she turned to look at him: he was decked out in the deerstalker cap and holding an oversized pipe in his right hand. "I'm sure it will turn out to be quite elementary, my dear."

"Oy!" Fred called out, leaping over Hermione to tackle his twin.

They were all kicked out of the library and had to finish their conversation in an abandoned classroom, but Hermione thought that overall it was a productive meeting.

ooOoo

For the second time in as many weeks, Severus Snape found himself hosting an upset first year in his office. Where he had heard Granger out due to some vague sense of obligation, his solicitious treatment of Draco Malfoy could be attributed entirely to the boy's family. While he had gotten to know Draco over a few year's worth of tutoring and considered him less intolerable than most eleven year olds, he still didn't particularly care for the boy's company. Draco was having the same trouble adjusting to Hogwarts that Snape had seen before from only children of rich families. Usually Snape was able to beat that out of his Slytherins pretty quickly. Unfortunately, his position required that he stay in Lucius Malfoy's good graces, which meant that Draco would be treated more gently than the average first year.

Snape had largely tuned out Draco's whining and was considering his recent potions research. He had been working on modifying the wolfsbane potion, replacing some of the more expensive ingredients in an effort to decrease the cost of the potion-and increase the profit margin for the brewer, of course. He had had a few ideas, but unfortunately he was having a hard time finding willing test subjects for his experimental testing. He would have to check with his contacts at the Ministry, they usually had a few werewolves that they didn't mind "volunteering" for that kind of thing. He frowned as he realized Draco had finished talking, and took a second to recall what he had been complaining about last.

"Mr. Malfoy," Snape said, "I alone determine how points are awarded in my class."

Snape kept a steady gaze on Draco as he spoke. Most of his students found being the sole focus of his attention faintly unnerving. Unfortunately, Draco had developed a bit of a resistance over the last few years, based in part on his belief that they shared a personal bond.

"I know when my potions are right, you've been teaching me for the last three years," Draco said. "I should check with my father about how good a potion needs to be to earn house points."

Well, now Draco had his full attention. The last thing he needed was Lucius Malfoy breathing down his neck with everything else that was going on this year.

"So, you're ready to save me the effort of evaluating your potions? How generous," Snape said, standing and looking down at Draco. "While you're at it, perhaps you could evaluate the work Miss Granger has been doing."

"What does that mudblood have to do with anything?" Draco asked, then flinched back as Snape's glare intensified.

"Don't embarass yourself with that kind of gutter language, Mr. Malfoy," Snape said, keeping his glare on Draco until the boy looked down and apologized.

"Still," Draco insisted, "I don't see what her potions have to do with me earning house points."

"They have everything to do with you," Snape said, "since her work has been better than yours in every class."

That was the crux of the issue. Snape, in his more reflective moments, knew that he was a bitter, twisted man. He had worked as a spy for Voldemort, as a double agent for Dumbledore, sometimes as a triple agent for the Dark Lord, to the point that he hardly knew which side he was on by the end of the war. But the one thing that he held sacrosanct was potions brewing. The only time he had ever refused Dumbledore was when the Headmaster requested that he sabotage the potions he was brewing for the Death Eaters. He had argued that such carelessness would reduce his value as a spy, but the truth was that he just couldn't bring himself to deliberately mis-brew a potion.

He wasn't above house politics or personal bias-even if Harry Potter had been the second coming of Horace Slughorn, he was going to go seven years without earning a single house point from Snape-but he wasn't going to mis-grade a potion just to curry favor with Lucius Malfoy. He was never going to award Granger any points, but if the best potion in class wasn't earning any points, neither were any of the others.

"That's impossible," Draco protested, "she must be cheating somehow."

"Do you think a first year muggleborn student could devise a way to cheat that would slip past me?" Snape asked. "Or perhaps her pairing with Neville Longbottom provides an unfair advantage?"

Draco had nothing to say in response, and Snape continued.

"By all means, please do write to your father," Snape said. "Ask him what you should do to brew better potions than your muggleborn classmate. I'm sure he will be happy to provide you with... advice."

Draco paled but said nothing as he turned and left the office. Snape watched him go and spared a thought to hope that the boy might learn to stop dragging his father into everything. Lucius doted on the boy, but the man had his limits. Shaking his head, Snape dismissed Draco from his mind and turned back to his research.

ooOoo

The next couple of weeks went well. No more of her things were stolen, perhaps in part because Hermione had taken to locking all of her possessions in her trunk whenever she was out of the dorm or asleep. It was a hassle, and it meant that Hermione didn't really get to make use of the built in bookshelf next to her bed, but at least she knew where everything would be in the morning.

Hermione knew that her locked trunk wouldn't be much of a deterrent in a school where everybody learned the Unlocking Charm during the first month of classes, so she also got in the habit of securing her trunk with magic. The spell she used was known as Lumley's Lock-up Charm, or more colloquially as "the simplest ward ever." It was the wizard's equivalent to a combination lock-the beginning and ending wand motions were always the same, but in between the caster could choose up to three different motions from a list of ten. The ward could only be unlocked by somebody who used the same three motions, and if it was forced open it would trigger a secondary spell. Hermione had it set up to fire a stinging hex at the back of her left hand.

So far all of these precautions had proven unnecessary as Pansy still seemed to be cowed by Snape's lecture. None of her fellow Slytherin's were being very friendly, but they also weren't going out of their way to give her trouble, so Hermione counted that as a win.

Hermione looked up as Neville entered the classroom where she had been waiting. The other two Gryffindors were nowhere to be seen. Apparently doing the assigned reading had raised their grades to a point they were happy with, or at least to a point where further improvement wasn't worth spending time with her.

Neville had an extra package under his arm, which he set down on a table and slid over to Hermione. She looked down and saw a full set of first year potions ingredients, still in its original wrapping. She looked up at Neville, raising an eyebrow in inquiry.

"I had to order some extra ingredients since we're brewing every potion twice," Neville explained. "I figured while I did that I could get you something, as a thank you."

"Neville, you didn't have to do this," Hermione said, though she was moved by the gesture.

"No, I did! You know my family thought I was a squib almost until my Hogwarts letter arrived? Everybody just expects me to be terrible at magic," Neville said, unusually impassioned. "Even the people in my own house, when they saw what happened in potions they all just scrambled not to pair up with me."

She had worried for Neville before but she hadn't realized just how bad he had it. Hermione felt a little embarassed when she remembered her initial reaction at being paired up with him.

"You're the first person to actually do something about it," Neville continued. "You thought I could be better, you made me be better. Now I know I don't have to be just the loser who melts every cauldron he touches. The least I can do is get you something to show my thanks."

Hermione hesitated, then gave in to her initial impulse and swept Neville into a hug. Even if everybody looked down on him, even if he was a boat anchor of a lab partner, she was glad to have him as a friend.

"Oh, Neville, of course you don't have to be a loser," Hermione said, then stepped away from him and cleared her throat. "Of course, if you screw up my grades I might just change my mind about using you for potions ingredients."

"I know, I know," Neville said, casually turning away to rub at some dust that must have gotten into his eyes. "I have something for you from the Twins as well."

Neville reached into his backpack and gingerly withdrew an unmarked cardboard box. He carefully walked over and set the box down in front of Hermione.

"They said you would know what to do with this," Neville said.

"I haven't exactly decided," Hermione said, "but I have some ideas."

She was very cautious as she packed the box in with her own possessions. Dungbombs were such delicate things.

ooOoo

The Charms class on Halloween was one that Hermione had been looking forward to for some time. She had been working to further develop her ability to split her concentration while casting spells, and the class on the Levitation Charm was her chance to show off the results. When Flitwick sent a spray of feathers around the room and told them to have at it, she held up a hand to restrain Millicent from casting, then focused on both feathers and gave her wand a swish and flick.

"Wingardium leviosa," Hermione said, keeping her focus on both feathers, feeling herself break out in a triumphant grin as both of them lifted from the table simultaneously. She made the feathers dance around in the air a bit before bringing them both down on the table where they had started.

She looked over at Millicent and saw that she was taken aback. The other girl had long since accepted Hermione's consistent accomplishment in spellcasting, but this was another step above and beyond. She looked like she might say something, but both of them jumped at the sound of applause coming from the aisle.

"Excellent job, Miss Granger!" Flitwick said, nearly bouncing in place. "Is two the most you can handle?"

"It's the most I've tried," Hermione said, flushing a bit at the praise.

"Well, let's see what you can do," Flitwick said, pulling out a handful of feathers and dropping them on the table.

Hermione found she was able to control three feathers, albeit not with as much dexterity as she could manage with just two. When she tried the spell with four feathers they trembled slightly, but didn't rise from the table. She tried again a few times, with similar results.

"That really is quite well done, Miss Granger," Flitwick said, "I usually give two points to the first person to levitate a feather, so I think six points to Slytherin is fair."

With that Flitwick bounded off to attend to other students. He left behind the small pile of feathers, which Hermione took as encouragement to keep trying to improve in her deployment of the charm. She and Millicent returned to their practice, although after a moment Millicent broke the steady stream of incantations and addressed her directly.

"That was something else, Granger," she said, then paused. "You know we don't always agree with Pansy, right?"

"But none of you rein her in when she picks on me," Hermione said, a little bitter. "Purebloods stick together, I guess."

"Not purebloods," Millicent said, shaking her head. "It's just... when your mothers are friends, and their mothers are friends, and their mothers were friends... you kind of have to be friends."

"I get it," Hermione said, glaring at the feather in front of her as if it were to blame. "I just wish there were some way you could be friends with her without being my enemy."

"Yeah, me too," Millicent replied.

After that there didn't seem to be much to say.

Hermione felt a little melancholy after class, but her mood picked up as the Halloween dinner approached. Halloween was the only day of the year that her parents allowed sweets, and she intended to honor that rule at Hogwarts by indulging in the sugary treats she usually avoided.

Her good mood was shattered when Professor Quirrel burst into the Great Hall to announce that a troll was in the dungeons before falling over in a dead faint. She spared a moment of disdain for her Defense professor before falling into line with the rest of her house. Just before they left the hall Hermione was struck by a thought and raced ahead to tug on Jennifer Nott's sleeve. The fifth year prefect looked down at her in surprise.

"Granger?" Jennifer said. "I'm a little busy right now."

"I know," Hermione said, "but there's a troll in the dungeons, right? Should we really be heading back to our common room right now."

"Good point," Jennifer said, rocking back a bit on her heels. She turned to face the rest of Slytherin. "Hold up a minute, guys!"

Jennifer made her way over to the knot of teachers that had gathered together at the head table. She soon got Professor Snape's attention, and Hermione saw him start in surprise before turning back to the rest of the teachers. After a moment Dumbledore stepped out of the group and tapped his wand to his throat once more.

"On second thought," the headmaster announced, "it might be best for student safety if you all stay here under the protection of your professors until the troll is taken care of. Also, five points to Slytherin for keeping a cool head in a crisis."

Hermione was glad to have the points, but she was even more heartened by the grateful looks she received from some of her fellow Slytherins as they realized what had just happened.

ooOoo

That evening Hermione was woken by a sharp stinging sensation on her left hand. She stayed still as she came awake, and listened carefully. It sounded like somebody was rooting through her things. Moving as silently as she could, Hermione pulled her wand out from under her pillow, parted the curtains around her bed, and took aim at the figure crouched over her trunk.

"Petrificus totalus!" The whispered incantation was enough to send a small bolt of light at the figure, who went stiff as a board toppled on her side as the spell hit. A moment later Hermione was standing over the still form of Pansy Parkinson. She didn't know if the girl had been pushed into resuming her pranks because of the recognition Hermione received that day, or if she was just bored and ready to start another round of "pick on the muggleborn." Either way, Hermione needed to decide what to do with her.

Part of her just wanted to dump Pansy in her own bed, reapply her defensive charms, and go back to sleep. She'd beaten the other girl, and all of her things would be there in the morning. But a small but insistent part of her insisted that that would be a bad idea.

_Never do an enemy a small injury._

She wanted this to stop. Humming thoughtfully, Hermione reached into her trunk and withdrew a quill and an inkwell. Holding her wand up for light, she ignored the deadly glare Pansy was sending her and carefully traced the word "THIEF" on the other girl's forehead in block letters. She then put her things away and dragged Pansy out into the common room.

Hermione propped Pansy up next to the exit and hit her with another couple of body binds for good measure, then checked the time. Seeing that it was four o'clock in the morning, Hermione figured that one of the early rising Slytherins would probably see Pansy before the petrification wore off. Even if they didn't, Pansy should get the message that picking on her was no longer a risk free activity.

When Hermione stepped into the first year girl's dorm, she paused at the sight of Pansy's wand sitting on the floor by her bed. Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry, Hermione pulled a pencil out of her trunk and transfigured it into a copy of Pansy's wand. She tossed the fake wand up onto Pansy's bed, then put the real wand in her trunk. After reapplying her security charms, Hermione did her best to get back to sleep.

It seemed like Hermione had only just fallen asleep when she was woken by a shout from just outside her bed.

"Granger!" Pansy called out. "Get out here you filthy mudblood!"

Yawning, Hermione poked her head out of her curtains, only to stop when she saw Pansy's "wand" an inch from her nose. She made a show of looking at the wand, then up at her tormentor.

"Pansy? You know you've got a thing..." Hermione trailed off, gesturing at her own forehead, and suppressed a smirk at Pansy's growl. It was a lot easier to be a smartass when you were being threatened by somebody at transfigured-pencil-point, rather than wand-point.

"You've gone too far, Granger," Pansy said, before taking a deep breath and settling herself. "I challenge you to a wizard's duel!"

"Right now?" Hermione asked, wondering what Pansy was thinking.

"No," Pansy shook her head, "tonight at midnight, in the trophy room."

Hermione blinked as Pansy's thought process became clear. Everybody in the school knew how the boy-who-lived had been tricked into earning a detention by Draco's false challenge to a duel. Pansy must really think she had no friends if she thought Hermione was going to fall for that one. She opened her mouth to decline when a piece of advice from the twins floated to the front of her mind.

_Nobody's easier to fool than the bloke who thinks he's fooling you._

"Fine," Hermione said. "I'll enjoy showing you what a muggleborn witch can do."

"And I'll prove that you don't belong at Hogwarts, let alone in Slytherin," Pansy sneered. "Tracy will be my second. You can bring whoever you like, if you make a friend between now and midnight."

Pansy turned and walked away, then turned back as a thought occurred to her. "We should stay out of the common room after classes so the prefects don't catch us leaving after hours. I'll see you in the Trophy Room at midnight."

Hermione nodded, and Pansy stalked off to the bathroom to try and scrub off her forehead. She could only assume that the other girl was too angry to be thinking straight when she reused Draco's plan like that. Even if Hermione hadn't heard about Harry's escapades in great detail from Neville, the proviso intended to make sure they didn't just set out from the Slytherin common room together would have been enough to make her suspicious.

Her mind was whirling as she pieced her own plan together. She knew her classmates thought of her as book smart and people stupid, but would Pansy really believe that she had fallen for such a stupid trap... Hermione gave a mental shrug. Either way, the other girl's wand was locked in her trunk, so there wasn't much real risk.

Actually, their only class today was potions, and if Hermione's memory served there was no wand usage associated with today's potion. There were some possibilities here.

ooOoo

Hermione moved through the rest of the day with the serious air of somebody facing a duel in the evening. If she was a little more careful than usual with her backpack during potions class, well, Neville was the only person close enough to really see and he wasn't going to say anything.

After dinner Hermione slipped away from the crowd of students and wandered into some of the less frequented areas of Hogwarts. She made her way up to the trophy room shortly before curfew, and settled down to wait. For lack of anything better to do she started review her potions textbook in preparation for her meeting with Neville the next day.

At eleven o'clock she shook off her fatigue and went to work. She took a little pride in the finished product-she would never embrace mischief making as a lifestyle the way the twins did, but she could see the appeal of a well constructed prank-and headed back down to the common room.

There was one close call where she had to duck behind a suit of armor to avoid a pair of wandering ghosts, but Hermione's trip back to the dungeon was otherwise uneventful. She entered her dormitory to see Pansy sharing a laugh with Tracy and Daphne, a laugh that was cut off when they saw Hermione.

"You're back," Pansy said. She did not look happy to see her.

"It occurred to me that if I waited until midnight I'd probably be running into Filch," Hermione said. "So yeah, I'm back."

"I guess even our house mudblood has more sense than the boy who lived," Pansy said, sneering.

"You know, we could still have our duel," Hermione said. "Right here, right now."

"Are you crazy?" Pansy asked. "If we wake Snape he'll have our wands."

"Tell you what," Hermione said, taking her wand and tucking it behind her ear, "I'll let you have first shot."

Faced with such an invitation, Pansy could hardly decline. She pulled her wand and stood. She bowed briefly to Hermione, then snapped her wand forward.

"Petrificus totalus!" Pansy chanted, apparently eager to pay Hermione back for her misadventure that morning. When nothing happened, her face flushed and she tried again.

"What?" Pansy asked, incredulous, "Why isn't my wand working?"

"You're asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking," Hermione said, taking her wand from behind her ear and tapping Pansy's wand, reverting it back to a pencil, "is: where is my wand? And what has Hermione been up to all day? And maybe, what kind of mess is Filch walking into up in the trophy room?"

Pansy stared at the pencil in her hand, then at Hermione, then back down at her pencil. Hermione smiled.

"If you hurry, you might be able to get your wand out of there so Filch at least doesn't have proof that you set him up."

Pansy looked down at the pencil one more time, as if it might have changed back into her wand while she wasn't looking, then bolted from the room.

"She's not going to make it, is she?" Tracy Davis asked as the door to the room slammed shut. It was the first time Tracy had directly addressed Hermione since the opening feast.

"If she hurries, she should get there just in time for the dungbombs to go off," Hermione said. She looked at each of the other girls in turn. "Is she really the kind of person that you guys want to take your lead from?"

None of the others said anything, and Hermione went to sleep with a heavy heart. She had won this battle, but she wasn't sure she could win the war. Even if Pansy kept escalating, she didn't think she would be able to go any further than she already had.

ooOoo

The next morning at breakfast, Hermione was brought out of her introspection when somebody dropped into the seat next to her. She looked up to see Blaise Zabini sitting next to her like it was the most natural thing in the world. She hadn't exchanged one word with the boy since the Opening Feast, but he was smiling at her like an old friend.

"That was a good bit of work last night, Granger," Blaise said. "Pansy's in detention for the rest of the term, and she cost Slytherin twenty points."

"Twenty points?" Hermione asked, shocked.

"Yeah, but it's all on her. Second rule of Slytherin, you know," Blaise said, waving a hand carelessly. "Don't get caught."

"Why are you..." Hermione trailed off, as she couldn't decide quite how she wanted to finish that sentence. Why was he telling her this? Acting like her friend? Talking to the muggleborn?

"If there's one thing my mother taught me, it's how to spot talent," Blaise said, leaning forward intently. "But all the talent in the world is no good if you're determined to be a pushover. Now that you've shown you can push back, life just got so much more interesting."

Hermione glared at him, a little annoyed at his cavalier attitude. "I'm glad you find my life entertaining."

"Hey now, I'm here to do you a favor," Blaise said, before adopting a more serious expression. "Pansy's family is in tight with Draco's. When she gets hit with the proverbial dungbomb, a little bit of it rubs off on him. I don't think Draco realizes it yet, but once he gets the next letter from his father, he's going to be coming after you."

Hermione blinked. That... was actually valuable information.

"Why are you telling me this?" She asked.

"Quid pro quo, Granger, try to keep up," Blaise said, before clapping her on the shoulder. "Welcome to Slytherin!"

With that, he stood up and wandered back over to the knot of Slytherin boys sitting at the other end of the table. Hermione watched him go, bemused. She had spent the better part of two months doing nothing but trying to succeed in class, help her house, and be nice to everybody, and it had gotten her precisely nowhere. Now she humiliated one of her housemates, and it earned her a friend, or ally, or... something.

She had a feeling that magic was not the only area where she had a lot to learn.

ooOoo

AN: The prank turnabout bit was stolen from a Harry Potter Peggy Sue fic whose name escapes me, I'd be happy to throw it a name check if somebody knows which one it was and lets me know in a review/PM.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Don't expect the updates to keep coming like this, I have been bizarrely locked in on this story in a way that's probably unsustainable. There's some IRL stuff coming down the pike that is likely going to slow things down for a bit.

ooOoo

Hermione spent that evening in the Slytherin common room, where her presence was accepted with surprisingly little comment. Most of that was due to Pansy's absence, of course-both because the girl was always by far the most eager to start in on Hermione, and because the circumstances that had led to her detention had apparently raised Hermione's social status somehow.

The common room itself was a comfortable place, decorated in various shades of green and silver. One wall was dominated by an oversized fireplace that bore on its elaborate mantelpiece the shining forms of the House Cup and Quidditch Cup. Above the fireplace was a mural depicting in stylized fashion the great history of Slytherin House; in her independent research Hermione had only been able to connect about half of the scenes depicted in the mural with events in recorded history, but she wasn't sure if the fault for that was in the mural or herself.

The prime seating near the fireplace was the territory of the older students, but there was plenty of space for all. The first years had taken over a small seating arrangement tucked away in one of the back corners of the room. Blaise and Draco were involved in an intense game of wizard's chess, while Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle were using the same table to support a game of Exploding Snap. Daphne, Tracy, and Millicent were sitting on the couch bracketing the other side of the table, and were immersed in a discussion amongst themselves that seemed to involve an inordinate amount of giggling. There were two armchairs opposite the girls' couch: Theo Nott had taken one of them and Hermione had snagged the other. They were both reading through their herbology textbooks in preparation for Monday's class, and were silent except for the occasional comment regarding their homework.

It was... nice. This was the kind of thing Hermione had imagined when she found out she was going to a magical boarding school. Naturally, she spent most of the evening waiting for the other shoe to drop, and she wasn't disappointed when the common room entrance opened up just before curfew to admit an irate Pansy Parkinson. Pansy wasted no time marching over to the knot of first years.

"Just what," Pansy asked, "do you think you lot are doing?"

The whole group looked up at Pansy, but it was Blaise who answered. "We're enjoying a relaxing Saturday evening, dear. You should give it a try, you're looking a little frazzled."

"You know that's not what I mean," Pansy said, then pointed at Hermione. "You're hanging around with _that_. Have you forgotten what Slytherin stands for?"

"Hmm, Slytherin is the house that rewards success, right? And avoids the stench of failure," Blaise said, before making a show of sniffing at the air. "It smells rather lemon-y."

"Madam Mulpepper's furniture polish with lemon fresh scent, I believe," Theo Nott said.

"I suppose it beats smelling like dungbombs," Blaise commented.

Pansy swelled up and looked fit to explode, but Daphne spoke up before she could say anything.

"Please, Pansy, stop," Daphne said. "Isn't it bad enough that you cost us twenty points? Now you have to ruin our evening too?"

Pansy stared at Daphne, incredulous, then wheeled around and dashed into the first year girls' dorm. Tracy and Millicent exchanged a glance and then stood and followed her. Draco watched them leave with a thoughtful expression on his face, before returning his attention to Blaise.

"She's going to make you lot pay for that, you realize?" Draco asked.

"She'll try," Blaise said, then shrugged. "Somebody needed to tell her that Hogwarts is more than just a muggleborn-baiting competition."

"It just goes to show," Daphne said with a touch of asperity, "pure blood is no guarantee of good breeding."

Draco inclined his head to acknowledge the point, then spread his hands in surrender.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," Draco said, before looking down at the chessboard. "It's my move, right?"

The group settled back down into their chosen activities, and once more the common room was quiet save for the occasional friendly comment or snap-related explosion. Hermione's eyes were firmly fixed on her herbology book, but her mind was replaying the evening's conversation, trying to come to some kind of understanding of her housemates' behavior.

ooOoo

Harry watched the torchlight glint off of Ron's hair as his friend darted down the hallway from one hiding spot to the next. He glanced back down the hall to check for watching eyes before he followed. It wasn't technically past curfew yet, but it was a little late for a couple of first years to be wandering the halls. And, after all, the area they were heading for was off limits on pain of death.

Ron had been banging on about this trip ever since Malfoy had tricked them into earning a detention when he sent Filch to take his place for their duel. In their mad flight from the castle's caretaker they had ended up pinned against a locked door, unable to avoid being caught. To add insult to injury, it turned out that their next Charms class featured the Unlocking Charm. Harry still didn't think this trip was a very good idea, but once it became clear that Ron was going to go with or without him he could hardly let his friend risk his life on his own. He had managed to stall for a few weeks, but Ron's patience had finally run out.

After a short time the two of them were standing in front of the imposing door. Ron reached out to the handle and confirmed it was still locked, then looked back at Harry.

"Are you sure about this, Ron?" Harry asked.

"This bloody door earned me a week of detentions with Filch," Ron replied. "Of course I still want to see what's behind it."

With that he pulled out his wand and, with a quick "_Alohomara_," the lock clicked open. Ron pulled the door open and stuck his head through to look-only to yank it back as an enormous snarling canine head seemed to fill the whole doorway.

Harry's heart leaped in his chest, but settled down when it became clear that the dog couldn't get past the door for some reason. Peering closer he saw a heavy iron collar around its neck, connected to a thick chain that disappeared back into the darkness of the room.

"Ron," Harry said, "is that a dog with three heads?"

Ron nodded, looking a little green, then gingerly closed the door. Fortunately, the dog was held back from actually occupying the doorway and the door closed easily enough.

"Looking back on it," Ron said, "I'm glad we skived off on that homework."

Harry imagined what might have happened: running from Filch in the middle of the night, fumbling open the door, darting through and running into... that. He shuddered involuntarily.

"Yeah," Harry said, "Suddenly that detention with Filch doesn't seem like it was so bad."

The two friends stared at the door for a moment, thinking back to that night. After a moment Ron started rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"You know," Ron said, "we ought to talk with Hagrid about that dog."

"What? Why?" Harry asked.

"He loves beasts like this, right?" Ron replied. "I bet he knows just how to get on its good side."

"I don't want to be on any side of that thing," Harry said.

"Think about it, Harry," Ron said, throwing his hands wide. "The next time we're running from Filch, where's the last place he'll look? The room with the ruddy great killer dog, that's where!"

Harry stared at Ron in surprise. Every time he thought he had his friend figured out, he pulled out something like this.

"I'm not sure if that's crazy or brilliant," Harry said slowly. "Or both. But I like it."

Harry threw an arm around Ron's shoulder as the two of them walked back down the corridor. "Talking to Hagrid is going to have wait until after the Slytherin match, though. Wood has us practicing every free minute for the next week."

Not that Harry was complaining about the practice schedule. He still wanted to pay Draco back personally for all the points he had cost Gryffindor, but he figured beating the ponce's house on the Quidditch pitch would be a good start.

ooOoo

Life in Slytherin was more complicated now that Hermione was no longer firmly locked in place at the bottom of the pecking order. What had appeared to be a monolithic block of purebloods was gradually revealed to be a complicated web of relationships of which Hermione knew she had only the most superficial understanding.

She spent most evenings in the common room, savoring both Pansy's absence and the acceptance of her peers. She generally contented herself with reading and observing the interaction of the other Slytherin first years, but occasionally found herself drawn into discussion of their class work. She soon proved to have a knack for explaining the intricacies of transfiguration, thanks in part to the extra work she had been putting in to mastering transfiguration basics since her detention with McGonagall.

Blaise, as part of his self-appointed mission to turn Hermione into a "real" Slytherin, insisted that she receive some kind of quid pro quo for all of her homework advice. That was how Hermione learned that Draco Malfoy had some genuine talent for potions, Theo Nott had some interesting insights on casting charms, and Daphne Greengrass had a surprisingly good grasp of History of Magic. She also pinned down Blaise and made him explain the significance of the word "mudblood" to her.

"It's not exactly a word for polite company, you understand," Blaise said.

"So I gathered," Hermione replied. "It means somebody with muggle parents, I assume?"

"Yes, but it's filthy. I mean," Blaise said, looking discomfited for the first time Hermione remembered, "if a recording came out of the Minister of Magic saying it at lunch, he'd be sacked by dinner time."

"Really?" Hermione asked. She knew there were words like that in English politics, but it was odd to imagine that wizards had their own set of taboos.

"Really," Blaise confirmed. "Even people who believe in pureblood superiority aren't going to toss that word around at the dinner table."

"Hmm," Hermione said, before she was struck by another thought. "And do you? Believe in pureblood superiority, I mean?"

Clearly happy for the change of subject, Blaise stuck his nose in the air in his best "arrogant aristocrat" pose. Hermione recognized it from the many times she had seen him tweaking Draco Malfoy.

"I," Blaise announced, "believe in superiority, generally."

Slytherins as a whole took a rather dim view of muggleborns, of course. Nothing official, and nothing really overtly hostile, but most Slytherins expected to outperform muggleborns as a matter of course.

Within her own age cohort Pansy was the most vocal exponent of this view. Tracy and Millicent followed Pansy's lead on most things, albeit with less enthusiasm since the dungbomb debacle. Daphne Greengrass was an equal opportunity snob who looked down on anybody she considered too "common."

The boys were similarly split. Draco expected "better blood" to show through, and Crabbe and Goyle believed whatever Draco told them too. Blaise seemed indifferent to the whole issue, while Theo had his nose buried too deeply in books most of the time to ever tip his hand on his personal beliefs.

Hermione kept her views to herself. She found anti-muggleborn sentiments abhorrent, of course, but she wasn't going to launch any kind of moral crusade until she was in a safer social situation herself.

She also started to get a sense of the complex web of relationships between her classmates' families. First among them, of course, was the Malfoys. The Crabbe and Goyle families were bound to them in some kind of semi-feudal relationship, and everybody else at least listened when a Malfoy spoke. In addition to being obscenely rich, they had influence through all levels of the wizarding government, and even had a strong say in how Hogwarts was run.

Apparently she had been going to school with some kind of wizard prince-equivalent without realizing it. Hermione couldn't quite bring herself to openly try to butter up Draco-not that she knew the first thing of buttering up purebloods, really-but she did make a little bit of an effort not to antagonize him. Mostly she spent her time in the common room reading her books and listening in around the edges of the social maneuvering that seemed to be a favorite pastime.

She kept meeting with Neville too, of course. By now she felt comfortable enough with his brewing that she worked on her own potions while he worked on his. Hermione didn't need the extra practice to produce potions according to the book's instructions, but instead used the time to experiment. After a truly heroic effort in History of Magic, she had managed to earn points from every professor at Hogwarts other than Professor Snape.

She had done extra potions research, reading through books in the library in the hopes of finding some tidbit she could use in class to impress the professor, but it was an exercise in frustration. Potions was a surprisingly under-theorized class compared to charms or transfiguration-there were some areas that were governed by well-understood laws, but much of modern potions lore had been developed through trial-and-error. She didn't think Professor Snape was the sort to be impressed by a student who had memorized the list of dos and don'ts related to a potion not on his curriculum, and there didn't seem to be any general rules that would aid in making better first year potions.

Accordingly, Hermione was experimenting with departures from the brewing instructions given in the text book. She tried adding a little more or a little less than the indicated ingredient, and occasionally mixed up how she prepared the ingredients. She knew enough to avoid the truly dangerous mistakes and had yet to melt a cauldron, but she also had yet to turn up any real improvement on the directions in the book.

It was during one such session that Neville broached the topic of Nicholas Flamel. Hermione finished noting down her observation that substituting minced flobberworm for sliced flobberworm was a bad idea and vanished the mess in her cauldron before turning to Neville.

"I've heard the name before," she said. "Why do you want to know?"

"Just curious," Neville said, doing his best to act nonchalant. He was a terrible liar.

"Hmm," Hermione said, "in that case I should let you satisfy your curiosity by looking him up yourself."

"We tried!" Neville said. "Hermione, this is important, you have to tell me!"

"Sure," Hermione said, "just as soon as you tell me why."

"It's a secret," Neville said, looking miserable.

"Well, this seems simple enough," Hermione replied. "You tell me a secret, and I'll tell you what I know about Nicholas Flamel. Quid pro quo."

Neville begged off, claiming that it wasn't his secret to tell. One week later, Hermione once again found their potions study session invaded by Harry and Ron. What followed was a stirring tale that somehow tied together Hagrid, the groundskeeper, a Gringotts break-in, Professor Snape, Professor Quirrel, and a giant three-headed dog. When they finished, Hermione regarded them levelly for a long moment.

"That is the most ridiculous story I've ever heard," Hermione said.

"It's all true!" Ron protested.

"You really think Professor Quirrell could even slow Professor Snape down in a real fight?" Hermione asked.

"It's not just Quirrell," Harry said, "it's Quirrell and Fluffy together."

"Right, Fluffy the three-headed dog," Hermione said, shaking her head. "Whatever, don't tell me. You can just owe me some other favor."

Hermione forestalled any further comments by thumping the potions book she had checked out from the library rather harder than necessary on the table. She flipped open to the page she had marked before sliding the book across the table to the three Gryffindors.

"You could at least try to come up with a plausible lie," she continued. "I mean, how could Dumbledore have some kind of business with the man who came up with Flamel's Law of Non-transitive Ingredient Substitution in 1365."

"This must be the wrong Flamel!" Ron exclaimed, but Harry placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him from continuing.

"I don't know, Ron," Harry said. "We've pretty much exhausted all the modern wizard biographies looking for this guy. It could be we need to look farther back. Maybe Dumbledore invented something based on his notes, or knows his descendants or something."

Harry and Ron were still arguing back and forth when they left the room, leaving Hermione's book behind. Hermione watched them go and frowned. They were really going above and beyond to sell their story, even after she told them what she knew. Maybe they were telling the truth. Hermione shook her head, dismissing the thought. Even if they were, meddling in the plans of Albus Dumbledore... she'd only known she was a witch for a few months, and even she knew better than that.

ooOoo

Things were going so well at Hogwarts that Hermione felt a little bit of hesitation at heading home for Christmas. Only a little; she did want to see her parents, but magic was just so fascinating. She had had it impressed upon her that magic was forbidden outside of school, and that violating the rule carried severe consequences. She was going to miss the feeling of mastering new spells.

Despite her mixed feelings, Hermione enjoyed a pleasant train ride back home. She and Neville shared a compartment, and nobody stopped by to bother them during the whole trip. Neville knew her well enough not to fill the time with unnecessary conversation, and she was able to make decent progress on the copy of Troublesome Transfigurations that she had checked out for the holiday.

When they arrived at King's Cross she wasted little time changing into her muggle clothing-it felt odd after months of wearing robes everywhere-and heading to the exit from Platform Nine and Three Quarters. She paused only a moment to gawk at the vulture on the hat of the woman greeting Neville at the platform, and soon found herself pushing her luggage trolley amidst a crowd of perfectly ordinary Londoners.

She was looking around for her parents when she was caught by surprise and lifted into the air. She nearly reached for her wand before she recognized the twinkling eyes regarding her from behind her father's glasses.

"Dad!" Hermione scolded, slapping him on the arm. "You scared me half to death."

Her dad just smiled and pulled her into a hug before setting her back on her feet.

"I'm just happy to see my little girl," he replied, before wiggling his fingers at her in a 'spooky' motion. "Besides, shouldn't you have been able to see me coming, with your magic and all?"

"It doesn't work like that," Hermione said, crossing her arms. "We don't take divination until third year."

"Good, two more years of surprises," her dad said with a smile. "Come on, your mother is waiting out in the car."

Hermione followed behind her father, unable to keep a smile off of her face. There really was something special about family, even if they could be annoying. They found the car easily enough, and with her dad's help it was easy enough to load her trunk up in the back.

"Welcome back, dear," her mother called back from the driver's seat as Hermione slipped in the back. "Where did you get that lovely sash? I don't remember buying it for you."

Hermione glanced down to where she had tied her Slytherin tie around her waist in a minor display of house pride.

"It's my house tie," Hermione explained. "It appeared when the hat put me in Slytherin."

"Oh yes, your sorting," her mother said, smirking at her father, who groaned.

"Cost me five pounds, that did," he said, then explained. "I had Ravenclaw, your mom had the other houses."

"Hey, you shouldn't gamble on something like that," Hermione said. "The sorting is a serious thing, your house is like your family at Hogwarts."

She did her best to keep a serious look on her face as she stared down her parents, but she wouldn't be able to say afterwards who started laughing first.

ooOoo

Hermione started to get a little twitchy after spending a full night at home. She didn't particularly like the other girls in Slytherin, but she had gotten used to sleeping in the same room with them. She also felt strangely exposed trying to sleep without putting up wards ahead of time.

She wanted nothing more than to spend the day reading her school books, but her parents were used to ignoring her wishes on that subject, and they dragged Hermione along on their annual trip to chop down a Christmas tree. She had thought she might escape this year, arriving home two days before Christmas, but her parents had made a special arrangement with the tree farm to leave a single fir tree standing. Hermione thought this was perfectly ridiculous and explained her view at length as they drove.

Her parents endured the lecture with good grace and bundled her out of the car for the holiday photograph. It was a Granger family tradition, a photo of the three of them standing by the tree: Sebastian brandishing an axe as if he were a rugged woodsman rather than a mild-mannered dentist; Rosalind looking to the camera with a broad smile on her face; and Hermione with her arms crossed over her chest, embarrassed by the whole thing.

Afterwards the two Granger women stood aside as Hermione's father chopped down the tree. Hermione couldn't help but think that a cutting charm and levitation charm would have taken care of things with much less fuss, but she didn't interrupt as her mother praised her father's prowess with the axe, and the three of them hoisted the tree up on top of the car.

Decorating the tree back home was Hermione's favorite Christmas activity. Once they had strung the lights and tinsel around the tree, the family gathered together to hang the remaining ornaments one at a time. There was one ornament for every year her parents had been married. The first commemorated the performance of _The Winter's Tale_ that they had attended on their first date; the second contained a small photograph of her mother in a hospital bed, holding a tiny bundle of clothes that was barely recognizable as an infant Hermione; and so on until this year's ornament, a stylized fantasy castle atop which her father had managed to paint a silver and green banner.

Once the decoration was finished they enjoyed a well-earned meal together as a family. Hermione couldn't help but compare the food to the feasts that passed as regular meals at Hogwarts, but she pushed the comparison aside and focused on enjoying the time with her parents. She went to bed with a full stomach, well-brushed teeth, and a smile on her face.

Christmas morning was lovely, of course. The presents from her parents were nice, but the real surprise came when an owl pecked on their kitchen window. Her mom opened the window with a bemused expression on her face as the owl flew past her and straight to Hermione. She relieved the owl of its package, smiling when she saw the name on the label.

"Oh, he did get me something," Hermione said.

"He?" Her father asked, "Is this somebody I should know?"

"It's not like that, dad," Hermione said, waving a hand dismissively. "It's from Neville, the boy from the train."

Hermione ignored the look her father was giving her and tore into the wrapping paper to reveal a layer of decorative wrapping paper, featuring a life size Golden Snitch darting all around the package. Removing the paper-and setting it aside for later disposal in accordance with the Statute of Secrecy-she saw a leather book cover. Dragonhide, unless she missed her guess. Flipping it open, she was a little disappointed to see that it was empty, just a cover... until she recognized the size of the cover and smiled.

She trotted up the stairs to her room and came back downstairs with the magical day planner that had been her first purchase from Flourish and Blotts. It was dead useful, but unfortunately the cover wasn't made to handle the kind of abuse that she put the book through. Neville must have noticed that it was looking rather tatty when she had consulted it during their review sessions.

Hermione lined up the spine of the book with the spine of the leather cover and was only slightly surprised when they melted together. When it finished her day planner had a lovely leather cover, complete with monogrammed "HJG" in the corner.

"That's very nice," her mother commented. "I hope you remembered to get him something."

"I did," Hermione said, "I ordered a robe pin to be delivered today."

"Oh," her mother replied. "Well, I'm sure he'll appreciate it."

Hermione hoped so. In her research on wizard culture she had found that wizards often secured the top button of their robes with a little decorative bar-as near as she could tell, it was roughly equivalent to a tie pin in that it was acceptable jewelry for a man to wear. She had found a silver pin with a cauldron motif in an owl order catalog and had it sent to Neville as a gift. Perhaps not as personalized as Neville's effort, but it was after all the thought that counted.

ooOoo

It was hard to leave her parents and head back to school, but Hermione couldn't deny feeling a certain eagerness to return to her magical studies. After bidding her parents goodbye at King's Cross Station, she almost stumbled over Neville when she crossed the barrier into Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

She thanked him for the book cover, and was appropriately gratified to see that he was wearing the robe pin she had gotten for him. There was a bit of an awkward lull in their conversation until she asked what he had thought of their winter homework. When she found out that he was planning to do it on the express she couldn't help launching into a lecture that lasted until they had secured a compartment on the Express, and after that they fell back into their comfortable Hogwarts routine.

The castle was as beautiful as ever, and Hermione felt a certain sense of homecoming when she cast the protective wards over her bedcurtains and tucked herself in to sleep.

Hermione received her first surprise of the new term when Draco pulled her aside before their potions class. She eyed him warily-Draco had yet to do anything to try to harm her, but she couldn't think of a reason for the Malfoy scion to single her out that would be good news for her-and waited for Draco to speak.

"Granger," Draco said, flashing her a smile, "we should partner up for potions today."

"Why?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know if you've noticed," Draco said, leaning forward conspiratorially, "but we're the best two students in the class. If we work together, we can finally win some points for Slytherin."

"Professor Snape paired me up with Neville Longbottom," Hermione replied. She wasn't sure quite what Draco was thinking, and she was hesitant to just take his offer without thinking about it.

"Crabbe will pair up with Longbottom. You don't need to worry about Snape," Draco said, "he likes me."

Hermione considered his offer. If she could secure anything like a positive relationship with Draco, her in-house social problems would be solved. On the other hand, if this was some kind of setup she couldn't see any way that it could hurt her without dragging down Draco's own grades. It was a gamble, but it seemed worth taking.

"Well then," Hermione said, "let's earn some points."

She started to regret her acceptance when she saw Neville's stricken expression in the potions classroom. While anybody would feel put-upon partnering up with Vincent Crabbe, Hermione imagined she saw some betrayal in the look Neville's directed at her. She gave an apologetic shrug and turned to start preparing to brew. If she was going to alienate Neville over this, she at least wanted to make sure it paid off.

Everything started off well. Draco was a pretty dab hand at ingredient preparation, and Hermione appreciated having somebody who could share a little more of the load in the brewing process. Draco insisted on being the only one to touch the cauldron or add ingredients, which was a little patronizing, but she could understand why he would feel that way after working with Crabbe for months. Hermione did her best to fight down her irritation for the sake of the greater good.

She could no longer bite her tongue when Draco chucked a handful of doxy eggs into the potion, producing a potion that was a shade of blue at least two steps closer to turquoise than it ought to be.

"The recipe says to sprinkle the eggs in," Hermione said, in as non-confrontational a tone as she could muster. Judging by Draco's flinch, she wasn't very successful.

"It doesn't matter, I know what I'm doing," Draco snapped. "Now leave me alone, I need to concentrate."

"Draco, the color is wrong," Hermione insisted. "You need to add some extra flobberworm mucus to settle it down."

Hermione suited word to deed and picked up the vial of mucus that was stood by the cauldron. Just before she could tip it in, her hand was caught up in a firm grip by her lab partner.

"No, that's not in the recipe," Draco hissed. "Don't mess this up, Granger."

"I'm trying to fix it," Hermione insisted, struggling against his grip. "You don't understand, I-"

Hermione's continued struggles had shifted the two of them enough to bump the stand supporting their cauldron, causing it's contents to slosh back and forth. Hermione had cut herself short when some of the potion slopped over the side and began streaming down the side of the cauldron towards the open flame underneath. She and Draco stared in horror, mentally reviewing the ingredients they had added to the potion so far, before they both ducked beneath the table simultaneously.

There was an enormous whooshing sound, and Hermione could see the whole classroom light up from the pillar of flame that had to be bearing their cauldron up towards the ceiling, where it was going to splash all over everything and-Hermione was jarred out of her thoughts about the upcoming catastrophe by an eerie silence that seemed to have fallen over the room. Peeking out from under the table she saw their cauldron contained in a bubble of magical force under the control of Professor Snape.

The professor turned his attention from the cauldron to regard the students who had caused the incident. "Five points from Slytherin for that apalling display."

"But-" Draco protested, but Snape cut him off.

"And I'll want a six inch essay on appropriate laboratory behavior in addition to today's homework," Snape said, lowering their cauldron back to the table before vanishing its contents. "I should think your grade on today's practical would be obvious."

Draco glared at Hermione, who glared right back. To think that after all the times she had feared Neville might ruin her grades, disaster would befall her because of a stuck up jerk who was actually pretty good with potions. He had to know she was right, he just didn't want to take advice from somebody he thought was beneath him.

Mindful of Snape's dim view of fighting in the classroom, they maintained a stony silence throughout the rest of the potions class. In deference to Slytherin unity, they made it all the way back to the common room without exchanging a word. As soon as they stepped inside Hermione had rounded on Draco, jabbing a finger into his chest.

"I can't believe you!" Hermione said. "If you had just listened, we-oof."

Hermione was interrupted by two strong hands grabbing her by either shoulder and slamming her back up against the wall. Looking up, she was shaken to see that she was being held in place by Crabbe and Goyle. After a moment Draco gave a nod, and the two of them released her before moving to stand by his side.

"Listen to me, Granger. Professor Snape tutored me in potions for three years. I've been partnered up with Vincent for the last two months," Draco said. He didn't raise his voice, but his anger was no less clear. "In all that time I have never brewed anything that was less than a success. I have never had anything happen that was even close to today's disaster."

"I can't believe I thought-" Draco began, then closed his eyes and shook his head. "Never mind. It should have been obvious that someone from your... background... could never be a proper Slytherin. Just stay out of my way."

With that, Draco turned and walked away. Hermione stared after him, her thoughts a confused jumble of fear and fury.

ooOoo

Neville was late for their next potions review session. Hermione spent about ten minutes convinced that she had managed to lose her one good friend in the castle. She had chewed through most of a thumbnail by the time Neville came running into the room.

"Sorry I'm late!" Neville called out as he hurried to set up his workstation. "I slept in, and then I took the wrong staircase and then I ran into Peeves and-oof"

Hermione cut Neville off with a big bear hug. After a moment she stepped back, blushing slightly.

"I'm just glad you came at all," Hermione admitted. "I thought you'd be mad at me for partnering up with somebody else."

"Nah, I know a little bit about how Slytherin works," Neville said. "It's been a tough year for you, yeah?"

"It's getting better," Hermione said. "Or it was, but-I'm sure it'll be fine. And I don't think Malfoy will insist on partnering up again, at least."

"That's a relief," Neville said. "You're much better company than Crabbe."

"I should hope so," Hermione sniffed, then laughed in relief.

"I'll also be just as happy not to be the responsible one," Neville said. "It was bloody nerve wracking."

"Language," Hermione chided, then smiled. "But look how far you've come-now you're the one making sure the cauldron doesn't melt."

Neville blushed and turned to start preparing his potions ingredients. He didn't handle praise well, likely because he wasn't used to hearing it. Hermione let the matter rest, but stopped him before he began brewing.

"Can you take a look at something for me?" Hermione asked. "I'm having trouble getting a charm to work, and it's hard to cast the charm and focus on the effects at the same time."

"Sure," Neville agreed, "what do you need me to do?"

"Just tell me what you see," Hermione said, and then closed her eyes.

Hermione focused as hard as she could on the need to protect herself, and on the feeling of being protected. Bringing her wand up with a sharp flick, she incanted "_Protego_" sharply just at the peak of the motion, the way the books directed. As it always did, she felt a burst of protective magic leaving her wand, and focused on guiding it into a sphere. As it always did, it followed her guidance readily enough, moving to surround her. And just as it always did, well before it formed a sphere it thinned out and, with a feeling of silk sliding between her mental fingers, the magic slipped out of existence.

"The shield charm?" Neville asked, alarmed. "Flitwick expects us to learn that this year?"

"No," Hermione shook her head. "I just thought that given my, well, situation, I ought to be able to protect myself."

"I guess it's better safe than sorry," Neville said. "That's pretty advanced stuff, though."

"I know," Hermione said, before huffing a little in frustration. "I know I'm doing it just like the book says, though. I don't understand why it's not working! What did it look like to you?"

"It looked like a soap bubble forming around you," Neville said. "But as the bubble was spreading out it got spread to thin and just popped."

"That's what it always does," Hermione admitted. "Maybe I just can't cast this one."

Hermione kicked the ground a few times in frustration and reviewed the spell in her head. The wand motion was simple enough, and she knew she was pronouncing the incantation correctly. The problem had to be with her intent, but she couldn't imagine what it was. The intent component of the shield charm was pretty simple compared to some of the transfigurations that she was able to perform. It didn't make sense to be able to do those but not the shield charm, unless there was something inherent to intent in charms casting that she just didn't understand. She was brought out of her thoughts by Neville clearing his throat.

"Maybe if you didn't spread it out so far it wouldn't go all thin and pop," Neville said. "Can you do that?"

"Maybe," Hermione said, thinking it over. She had quite a bit of experience with shaping magic the way she wanted-that was the bread and butter of transfiguration, after all. Combining the shaping with everything else going on instead of making a nice simple sphere would be a little tricky, but it should be doable.

Hermione closed her eyes once more, focusing on her need for protection. She brought her wand up in a flick and said the incantation one more time. This time, as the magic gathered, she focused on shaping it, almost transfiguring the magic into a small space in front of her. She felt the magic doing... something. Opening her eyes, she saw a shimmering blue disc hovering in the air between her and Neville.

Neville chucked one of his spare potions vials at the disc, and it bounced off and fell to the floor in a clatter. Neville whistled in appreciation, as Hermione watched the ripples induced in the disc where the vial had struck. She could feel the vibrations in the magic, but with a little more focus on the shape of the shield it settled down. Satisfied that she had some control over the spell, she let her concentration lapse and the disc shimmered out of sight.

"Five points to Slytherin," Neville said jokingly, then shook his head. "Seriously, that's impressive. When are we actually supposed to learn that anyways?"

"I don't know, I found it in a book on dueling in the library," Hermione said. "I can't just stick to the spells we learn in class if I'm going to keep up-who knows what kind of things Malfoy is learning from his father? I really wish I could cast the spell properly."

"You could always ask Flitwick," Neville suggested. "He's nice, and he used to be a professional dueling champion."

"Really?" Hermione asked, surprised. At some point she would internalize the fact that appearances in the magical world could be deceiving, but apparently she wasn't there yet.

"Yeah, Gran says he was really something to see," Neville said, then gestured at his cauldron. "Now if you're done showing off, some of us need to work hard to get our passing grades."

"If you're in such a hurry to get started you should have gotten here on time," Hermione replied, teasingly.

Neville grumbled a little bit and then settled into the familiar process of potion brewing. Hermione watched him as they slipped into their usual companionable silence, relieved that their relationship hadn't been affected by that debacle of a potions class.

ooOoo

Hermione took Neville's advice and hung back at the end of her next charms class. When the last of her classmates had left she walked down to the front of the room where Flitwick was already grading papers.

"Professor Flitwick, may I ask you something?" Hermione asked.

"Of course, Miss Granger," Flitwick replied, raising his head with a look of surprise on his face. "Although I daresay you need no advice about today's lesson."

"No, it's not about that," Hermione said. "It's... well, it's easier if I just show you."

Hermione drew her wand and did her best to ignore Flitwick's scrutiny as she gathered her thoughts. When she thought she was ready she brought her wand up and said the incantation for the Shield Charm, focusing on the shape she wanted. When it finished she had a disc about the size of a serving platter attached to her left forearm. She had found that anchoring it to her arm was about as simple as anchoring it to the air, and it seemed more practical.

Flitwick hopped up and stepped forward, peering closely at the shield. He then took a few steps back and drew his wand.

"May I?" He asked, and sent a jinx her way when she nodded. The spell bounced off the shield right back at Flitwick. Before Hermione could do anything he had caught the spell on his wand and dispersed it in a shower of sparks. In the mean time, the impact of the spell on her shield had started a set of vibrations that soon escaped her control and violently dispelled the shield, forcing Hermione to take a few steps back.

"Well, that's a reasonable effort at the usual duelist's application of the Shield Charm," Flitwick said. "I'm afraid that learning to hold the spell under fire is a skill that can only be acquired through practice."

"Thank you, sir," Hermione said. "The problem, though, is that I can't get the regular shield charm to work properly, and I don't understand why."

"I see," Flitwick said, "I presume it pops when you try to make the full sphere?"

Hermione nodded, and he continued.

"The shield charm draws on your need to protect, or to be protected," Flitwick said. "If that need isn't strong enough, then when you try to stretch the protect too far it will pop."

"But I really want it to work," Hermione protested.

"Hmm, how to explain," Flitwick said to himself, idly twirling his wand in his fingers. "Oh, I know! I'd imagine you do well quite well at Transfiguration, Miss Granger?"

"I guess," Hermione said.

"You'd have to, to be able to shape the shield like that," Flitwick said. "Intent in transfiguration is all about direction and control. Telling the magic go here, go there, do this, don't do that. It all comes from the head."

Flitwick tapped his forehead for emphasis, then moved his hand down to his heart.

"Charms have some of that, of course, but they often also have a component that comes from the heart," Flitwick explained. "When I say the shield charm draws on your need for protection, I don't mean that you're thinking about protection, or you know you need a shield. I mean that in a very visceral way you need that protection. It's a need you feel in your bones."

Flitwick looked at her with an unusually serious expression on his normally cheerful face.

"It's something you learn from experience. The strongest need is developed when you truly fear for your life, though of course that comes with its own drawbacks," Flitwick continued. "Most first years won't have the sort of life experience that is conducive to a full body shield, which I think is a good thing. Frankly, many adults haven't developed the kind of experience you need to cast a proper shield."

Hermione considered her own history with violence. She certainly had never feared serious bodily injury before coming to Hogwarts. Since the school term started she had had concerns about what her classmates might do, but she had never been in real present danger. Apparently all of that wasn't enough to fuel a proper shield.

"So what do I do?" Hermione asked, a little frightened. The idea had been to learn the shield charm before she was in a life and death situation. Perfecting it afterwards was a litle late.

"The variation that you showed me is more practical for many situations," Flitwick said. "If you're having to use it frequently, I'm afraid the experience will take care of itself."

"Thank you, sir, I appreciate you taking the time," Hermione said, and she meant it. It was a little disappointing that he hadn't been able to help her cast the full shield, but having an explanation for why it wasn't working made the whole situation a lot less frustrating. Also, she had a feeling that his explanation of different types of intention would explain several previously opaque passages in the advanced books she had been reading.

"Not at all, Miss Granger, I'm always happy to help a curious student," Flitwick said, then cocked his head as if struck by a passing thought. "You know, I've been speaking with Quirinus about starting the dueling club back up again next year. You might find it worthwhile to attend."

Hermione thanked him for the suggestion and turned to leave, though she was torn about the idea. It might be a good learning experience, but it also might be more like her experience with dodgeball back in primary-an official sanction for bullying that would usually be forbidden-it all depended on how she stacked up against the pureblood students, and she wouldn't really know until she was already in a duel.

ooOoo

Hermione endured the next few days, firmly focusing on her next meeting with Neville. Although she still made some appearances in the Slytherin common room, it was now driven more by a stubborn sense of pride than the feelings of camaraderie that she had enjoyed for such a brief period of time. The combination of Pansy's freedom from detentions and Draco's now open contempt for her froze Hermione out of most social interaction within her house. Blaise was largely ignoring her, perhaps waiting to see how she would respond to this latest setback. Theo had responded to the increased social tension by burying himself even deeper in his books than before, and hardly spoke in public.

She didn't exactly fear for her safety, but the memory of being manhandled at Draco's direction stuck with her, and she didn't want to find herself feeling so powerless again. Fortunately, her classes went smoothly enough despite the increase in social tension, and Neville showed up for their mid-week potions review on time.

The high point of the session was the pillar of flame Hermione managed to produce from her cauldron in the middle of the brewing process. Hermione made a note in her notebook-grinding doxy eggs before adding them to the potion increased volatility-after a moment's thought, she underlined the word "volatility" a couple of times.

"All right there, Hermione?" Neville asked.

"Yeah," Hermione said, glancing at Neville's cauldron. "You've stirred a little too quickly there, the potion shouldn't be such a deep red yet. Give it an anti-clockwise stir before you add the next ingredient."

"It's a little hard to stir evenly when somebody is blowing up the potions lab," Neville grumbled, even as he followed her advice.

"At least this time it didn't happen in the middle of class," Hermione said.

Neville nodded without taking his attention from his potion. Hermione left him to his work and started cleaning out her cauldron, revisiting the experience of working with Draco and fuming again at his intransigence. She waited until Neville was done with his potion before speaking again.

"Do you think you can help me practice my shield?" Hermione asked. "I need to work on holding it up against jinxes and hexes."

"Oh, I would," Neville said, then worried his lip for a moment before continuing. "But I, uh, can't cast any jinxes."

"What?" Hermione asked, surprised. "Why didn't you tell me, I could help you-"

"No, no, it's ok." Neville interrupted. "Everybody can't be good at everything, you know."

Hermione certainly did not see why Neville shouldn't be able to cast a few jinxes, at least, but he obviously didn't want to talk about it. She decided to let the matter rest. For now.

"Anyways," Neville continued, "I can ask Harry and Ron if they want to help out."

"You think they would?" Hermione asked, surprised.

"Sure," Neville said, "you helped them figure out who Nicholas Flamel was, after all."

"I thought it was the wrong Flamel," Hermione said.

"You got them looking in the right direction," Neville said with a smile, and refused to speak any further on the matter.

And that was how Hermione found herself in an abandoned classroom a day later fending off jinxes from the boy-who-lived. His first spell, a Jelly-Legs Jinx, bounced off of her shield directly back in his face. Harry showed admirable reflexes in ducking his head out of the way, while Hermione focused on the shield. The impact of the spell disrupted it, like a rock striking the waters of a pond, but she was starting to see how to smooth it back into place. It helped that Harry's jinx didn't seem to hit as hard as Flitwick's had.

While Hermione was focused on the shield, Harry caught her with a stinging hex in the side. She stood straight up and glared at him.

"Come on, Hermione," Harry said, completely unrepentent. "You're trying to figure out how to use that thing, not just cast it, right?"

Hermione nodded and brought her arm back up to protect her body. Harry snapped off three jinxes in quick succession, all of which bounced off of her shield. She felt the disruption of the first and second, and felt like she had it under control, but when the third jinx hit she wasn't able to keep the shield from shaking itself apart. The backlash sent her staggering back a few steps, and she held her hand up to call a break.

Once Harry backed off she took a seat on a nearby desk and scowled in thought. Most first years dealt with hexes by getting out of the way, or by using the counterspell to cure the effects. Shielding was superior, but not if she couldn't get it to work properly. She was starting to think that her best option was simply to tread lightly around the common room and hope that nobody decided to pick a fight.

"Hey, don't sulk-that was pretty good," Harry said, ignoring the look Hermione shot at him from where she was definitely not sulking. "I didn't even know we were learning a shield spell this year."

"It's not on the lesson plan, exactly," Hermione said. "Come on, let's try again."

Harry was game, and they jumped back into their practice. By the end of the hour Hermione was holding her shield together with much more poise, although Harry was still able to break through eventually by keeping up a constant barrage. She also had a splitting headache from maintaining such intense concentration for so long.

"Say," Harry asked as they finished up, "you reckon I could give that spell a try?"

"Sure," Hermione replied, "just give me a minute."

She sat down and cradled her head in her hands until it stopped feeling like a gnome was trying to chisel its way out of her head. Looking up, she saw Harry was waiting patiently, and she smiled at him before proceeding to walk him through the requirements of the shield charm, including an edited version of Flitwick's lesson regarding the emotional requirements of the spell.

On his initial cast Harry created a protective shield around his whole body that shined with the kind of strength that Hermione could only generate by severely limiting the size of the shield. At first she was taken aback by Harry's accomplishment, but on second look the shield was less of a globe and more of a sort of blob, oozing erratically in one direction, then the other. Eventually an oscillation set up-the same kind that happened when her shields reflected an attack-and the entire shield disappeared with a noise like a thunderclap, sending Harry flying backwards into the wall.

Fortunately, Harry seemed largely unharmed. Hermione thought about what Flitwick had said, about having to feel the need for protection deep in your bones, and wondered what Harry had lived through to be able to generate such a powerful shield. She almost opened her mouth to ask, before she remembered who she was talking to. The boy-who-lived had been attacked by Voldemort at the age of one, his parents killed-a situation didn't get much more life or death than that.

Harry groaned, bringing Hermione out of her thoughts. "Guess I need a little work before I try that again."

"You're already getting more protective force behind it than I can," Hermione admitted. "You could stand a little improvement in shaping the magic, though."

"I'll make a note of it," Harry said, standing up and cracking his back as he stretched. "I have quidditch practice next week, but I'd be up for another practice session after that. Next time we both work on our shield charms equally, though."

"Really?" Hermione asked. She thought Harry would have enough friends in Gryffindor that he wouldn't want to spend any extra time with her if he wasn't getting something out of it. But on second thought, working out how to cast a decent shield would be a nice benefit for both of them.

"Yeah," Harry said, "better safe than sorry, right?"

ooOoo

Life went on, as it tends to do. Hermione continued to be a largely ignored presence in the Slytherin common room. She had her regular study sessions with Neville, and the occasional meeting with Harry, but her most constant companions were her books. She continued warding her possessions whenever she left them behind, and warding her bedcurtains before bed. Nobody tried to bully or prank her, whether out of fear of her reputation or out of simple disinterest.

Things started to change as exams approached, and the first years grew nervous about their first major set of tests at Hogwarts. It was only natural to ask Hermione questions as they studied-even the most stubborn pureblood had to notice that she had spent a year answering every question in every class-and Hermione didn't begrudge them the help. In part this was because she thought they might later feel some social obligation to treat her a little better, but really Hermione just couldn't resist helping a fellow student in need.

Draco broke up the monotony of studying with a wild story about catching Harry, Neville, and Ron with a dragon. Hermione thought it was a fairy tale meant to cover up whatever he had done to cost Slytherin fifty points, but in the Great Hall the next day Gryffindor had indeed lost one hundred and fifty points, taking them completely out of the running for the House Cup, as they trailed Slytherin by one hundred and seventy-two points heading into the last week of the year.

Hermione was particularly excited for the last potions class of the year. Neville noticed that she was practically bouncing in her seat before class started and gave her a questioning glance. Hermione responded by reaching over and closing his potions book.

"Today, just do what I say," Hermione said.

Neville looked a little skeptical, but he went along with it. One messed up potion would hardly start to offset what he owed her for all of the help she had given him this year, and she was hardly the type to cause a deliberate mess and try to pin the blame on him.

Hermione was grateful for Neville's trust, but her feelings of gratitude were soon put to the side as she focused on their brewing. She led Neville in a whirlwind of chopping, dicing, and grinding-he raised an eyebrow a couple of times when he recognized deviations from the recipe in the book, but didn't say anything.

She hovered over the cauldron like a nervous mother as she added the last ingredient and gave it two anti-clockwise stirs, relaxing with a sigh of relief as the potion turned the bright purple of a properly made pepperup potion. Hermione raised her hand to get Professor Snape's attention, idly noting that only half of the class period had elapsed.

Professor Snape strode over to their table, a scowl fixed on his face at the unusual sight of Hermione apparently asking for help in the middle of a class. His expression changed as he reached their table and Hermione had the satisfying experience of seeing a genuine look of surprise cross his face. He soon schooled his face into his customary scowl and fixed Hermione with a glare.

"Explain," Snape said, his voice flat.

"I ground the doxy eggs up before adding them to the potion," Hermione said. "It increased the speed of the reaction and-"

"And the explosive release of energy?" Snape interrupted.

"We mixed the ground eggs in with flobberworm mucus before adding them to the potion in order to moderate-" Hermione said, until she was cut off.

"And the effect on the bicorn horn?" Snape asked.

"Two extra stirs before adding the doxy eggs," Hermione replied.

"And the mandrake root?" Snape asked.

"Sliced instead of cubed, and added in before the eggs," Hermione said.

Snape stared into her eyes for a long moment, considering. Hermione felt a thin bead of sweat break out on her forehead. All around the class most students were waiting for their potions to finish simmering, and every eye was fixed on the standoff between professor and student.

"In the future, do not alter your preparation methods without first notifying me. However, since you appear to have thought this through," Snape paused again, and Hermione found herself holding her breath. "Two points to Slytherin."

The entire class broke out in excited murmurs as Hermione rocked back in surprise. This was the first time Professor Snape had awarded points to any of the first year students-she had hoped that modifying the potion would be enough, but it was always hard to tell how he would react to surprises. She saw Draco Malfoy's face flush in anger, and she was pretty sure she saw a few other students handing coins over to settle long-standing bets.

"Thank you, sir," Hermione replied after she had recovered from her surprise. "Um, sir, Neville did help with the preparation."

"Indeed," Snape replied, fixing his gaze on Neville. "Mr. Longbottom, can you explain a single one of the changes in the preparation of the potion?"

There was another long moment of silence. Neville started to say something a couple of times, but could only stutter out a few syllables before falling silent. When it became clear that he would not answer, Professor Snape shook his head.

"As I thought," he said, "two more points to Slytherin for being the only person at the table who knew what they were doing."

Hermione patted Neville comfortingly on the shoulder as Professor Snape whirled around and stalked back to the front of the room. It was all she could do to keep from pumping her fist at the triumphant feeling she felt welling up inside. She spent the rest of the class in a pleasant haze, and it scarcely felt like her feet touched the ground on the way back to the common room.

She was brought rudely back to reality when Draco Malfoy poked an accusing finger in her face. Looking past the offending digit, she saw from his expression that he had hardly settled down since she was awarded points-rather, it looked like he had been stewing on his anger and frustration ever since.

"What did you do?" Draco demanded.

"I brewed a potion," Hermione replied. After a pause, she couldn't resist adding, "Better than you did."

"That's impossible!" Draco said, then began pacing back and forth, too angry to stand still. "You must have cheated! A mudblood like you can't be any good in potions."

"What was that?" Hermione asked, sharply. She hadn't quite internalized the reaction that "mudblood" drew from people who had grown up as wizards, but she understood when she had been insulted, and she hadn't missed every head in the common room swiveling around to look at Draco when he said it.

"You heard me," Draco said, stopping in his pacing to glare at her.

"You know, Draco, you used to talk a lot about duels," Hermione said, letting her hand drift down near her wand. She felt months of suppressed anger boiling through her veins, but her hand and voice were steady. "Maybe you and I should have one."

"In the trophy room at midnight, I suppose?" Draco scoffed.

"No Draco, that's your trick," Hermione shook her head, then leaned forward and pitched her voice so that only Draco and the gathered first years could hear her. "After our last exam, we have some free time. We'll all leave the exam together and find an abandoned classroom."

"I'm not going to waste my time crossing wands with a mudblood," Draco replied, glancing around at their audience.

"I understand, Draco," Hermione said, smiling sweetly. "Can't keep up with me in charms, can't keep up with me in transfiguration, can't keep up with me in potions. No reason to think you can keep up in the dueling circle."

"Fine," Draco snapped, his temper winning out. "Crabbe will be my second."

"I'm sure Blaise will be happy to serve as my second," Hermione said, glancing at the boy and receiving a nod. "Remember now, no tattling this time."

With that, Hermione turned and headed in to the girls' dorm. She tried to open her trunk to pull out her study materials, but found that her hands were shaking too badly to undo her wards. Giving up, she sat on her trunk and stared down at her hands. Now that the anger had left her system she felt strangely drained, and she wasn't sure this was such a good idea. If she lost the duel, she would be humiliated. If she won, Draco would be humiliated, which might be worse.

ooOoo

Hermione did some work in preparation for the duel, but she still focused a significant amount of effort on her exam preparation. She had already worked with Harry until she was confident in her shield, and she knew enough jinxes to end the fight if she could safely connect. There was only so much more she could do, and it wouldn't do to hurt her exam grades because Malfoy had gotten under her skin.

The exams passed in a blur, and it was soon the morning of their history exam-and the duel. Hermione was surprised when Blaise pulled her aside before they entered the exam room, taking advantage of the last possible moment for private conversation.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Blaise asked. "There's no shame in backing down from a Malfoy."

"I'm sure," Hermione replied. "You've heard the things he's been saying about me."

Blaise took her by the shoulders and looked in her eyes for a moment, his expression oddly serious. He must have seen something he liked, because he nodded as he released her and stepped back.

"No half measures," Blaise instructed. "If you're going through with this, you have to be willing to finish it."

Hermione nodded, and they made their way back to the classroom in time for the history test. None of the questions were any great surprise-Binns used the same tests year after year, and Slytherin house was practical about sharing old tests to ensure that its first years did well-and it seemed like no time at all had passed before they were leaving the classroom.

While the other students continued to the Great Hall, the first year Slytherins broke off en masse and headed to the second floor. There was an old classroom that was frequently used for dueling practice-the desks had long since been removed to make space-and the students were silent as they filed inside.

Draco took his position with Crabbe by his side, and Hermione and Blaise lined up facing them from across the room. The other Slytherins formed a loose circle around the combatants. The entire atmosphere felt surprisingly solemn. After a moment Draco broke the silence that had settled over the room.

"Ok, Granger, here's how this is going to work: we're having a proper wizarding duel, which means wands only. None of you lot are going to interfere," Draco said, looking deliberately around the room at the audience, "and we continue until one of us yields. We begin by bowing to each other, then start casting. You understand?"

Hermione nodded, and heard Blaise stepping away from her as Crabbe slipped away from Draco to join the audience. She bowed slightly, keeping her eyes on Draco as he bowed as well. As soon as his wand began to move she snapped up her wand and cast a shield charm over her arm.

Draco's first hex deflected away from her shield, and Hermione noted with some satisfaction that Pansy had to jump to the side quickly to avoid the spell as it left a small burn mark in the floor. His second spell was deflected to the other side, and Hermione saw from the corner of her eye that Goyle began dancing uncontrollably until Daphne cast a counter spell.

She managed to deflect Draco's third spell straight back at him. He didn't have time to react and took the jinx full in the chest. Hermione dropped her concentration on the shield-holding it up hadn't been much of a struggle at all, Draco didn't cast nearly as quickly as Harry had in their practice session-and snapped her wand around, shouting the incantation for the disarming charm. Draco, already stumbling backwards, was completely unable to dodge.

The charm hit Draco in the chest, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing to the ground. His wand arced through the air into Hermione's waiting hand. She tucked his wand in her pocket and stalked forward, keeping her wand trained on his prone form.

Draco tried to scramble to his feet as she moved forward, but a jelly-legs jinx had him sprawled out on the floor once more. Hermione stopped when she was a few feet away from him and glared down at her opponent. She felt all of the anger from every snub, every time her things had been stolen, every time somebody had talked down to her just because of her parents, all of it rushing through her system. Maybe it was unfair to blame Draco for everything Pansy had done, but if there was a better exemplar of the whole system of pureblood prejudice, Hermione didn't know who it would be.

The silence in the room was broken when Draco hiccupped and a slug fell out of his mouth to land on his lap, answering the question of what his last jinx had been.

"You lose, Draco," Hermione said.

Draco nodded, and she felt another flash of anger.

"Say it," she ordered.

"What?" Draco asked, grimacing as he followed the question by hiccupping up another slug.

"I want to hear you say it," Hermione said. "You lost to the mudblood."

Draco stared up at her with incomprehension, and Hermione snapped a stinging hex down at his right hand. Draco hissed in pain, and she saw a flurry of motion out of the corner of her eye. Glancing to the side, she saw Blaise put a restraining hand on Crabbe's shoulder, preventing the other boy from rushing forward. The rest of the Slytherin first years seemed to be frozen in place.

"Fine," Draco said, "you win, all right?"

She pulled his wand out of her pocket and started to toss it over, then stopped.

"I don't suppose you're thinking of running to Professor Snape and letting him know you got picked on by a girl?" Hermione asked. Draco shook his head, coughing out another slug. "Or planning to hex me as soon as my back is turned?"

Draco shook his head again, and she shrugged before tossing his wand over. She turned on her heel and stalked back toward the door, keeping an eye on Blaise in case Draco changed his mind. She exited the room without incident, slumping with fatigue as soon as she was out of sight of the rest of the Slytherins.

She wasn't sure what was going to happen next, but one thing was for sure: they wouldn't be ignoring her next year.

ooOoo


	4. Chapter 4

AN: As always, all comments are appreciated. I especially like to hear what worked for you, what didn't, and why.

ooOoo

There was little immediate fallout from the duel. Draco spent as little time as possible in the common room, and perhaps the other first years began avoiding Hermione out of fear rather than contempt, but that was about it. Hermione's victory had won her neither friends nor sycophants, which suited her just fine. At the moment, friends would only be a distraction.

As soon as she had settled down from her duel with Draco, Hermione had begun her favorite post-exam activity. Working from memory she painstakingly reconstructed each exam and her answers, then began evaluating her own exams, looking for areas of potential improvement. It was a habit that had won her no friends in her primary school-few students enjoyed rehashing a test on which they hadn't even received marks-and her parents had done their best to stamp it out of her, remorselessly forcing her to play outside whenever they figured out what she was doing.

Her parents weren't at Hogwarts, and Hermione luxuriated in the ability to indulge her habit without their supervision. She respected her parents, and she obeyed their directions on matters like sweets consumption, but she wasn't going to let them stand in the way of academic achievement. Accordingly, she spent most of her time sitting before the writing desk tucked away in the corner of the common room, somewhat maniacally poring over her reconstruction of the first year final exams.

Blaise finally dragged her out for a walk around the lake before the end-of-year feast, insisting that even Slytherin students needed occasional exposure to sunshine. She had resisted at first, but looking around the Hogwarts Grounds under the light of a beautiful summer's day, she couldn't escape the conclusion that Blaise had been right, and even said as much.

"Be still my heart," Blaise said, clutching his chest in an exaggerated display of shock. "Hermione Granger just admitted she was wrong about something."

"I'm happy to admit when I've erred," Hermione said, before raising her nose in the air and continuing in a snooty tone of voice, "I just don't make a habit of making mistakes."

Blaise chuckled, and they continued to amble onward, now roughly halfway around the lake. The view of the school from that distance was striking-Hermione still had a hard time believing that she studied at a castle that would have been at home as an illustration for any of her books of fairy tales.

"You may have made a mistake with Draco," Blaise said. "The Malfoy's have long memories, and plenty of ways to pay back a grudge."

"Maybe," Hermione conceded, "but you heard what he said about me. What could I do?"

Blaise didn't answer, and Hermione shrugged.

"Besides," she continued, "he's such a prat-you can't tell me you've never wanted to hex that stupid grin off his face."

"I could," Blaise replied, "but I'd be lying. Still, be careful-you don't want to wind up like Potter."

"Beloved by wizards everywhere?" Hermione asked.

"No, unconscious in the hospital wing." Blaise replied.

Seeing Hermione's gobsmacked expression, he took it upon himself to fill her in on the latest gossip. Apparently Harry, Ron, and Neville had all been involved in some kind of misadventure shortly after their final exam. Harry had been unconscious ever since, and Ron and Neville were keeping surprisingly tight-lipped. Even stranger, Professor Quirrel had not been seen anywhere about the castle since Harry was hurt.

In the absence of credible information, rumors were flying around the castle. Some said that Harry had been struck down by Lord Voldemort himself, and that Quirrel had sacrificed his life to delay the Dark Lord until Dumbledore could intervene and prevent him from finishing Harry off. Others said that Harry had cracked under the pressure of being the boy-who-lived and attacked the Defense Professor while under the grip of some kind of psychosis.

Hermione was rather dismayed to learn that there was a significant amount of wagering going on around what the true cause of Harry's injury might be, but she was not surprised to learn that the odds-on favorite was that the boys had done something that was going to cost them a lot of points-Harry and Ron seemed to mean well, but the two had between them done more damage to Gryffindor's chances at the House Cup than any two students of the other houses had managed.

Blaise laughed when she angrily turned down his offer to put money down on one of the possibilities, taking it as a cue to change the subject. The two chatted for a while about nothing in particular before Blaise brought the conversation back around to a topic that had clearly been on his mind.

"You know, Granger," Blaise said, "my mother likes to host a little get-together during the summer at our cottage out in Provence. You might find it amusing to come join us."

Hermione turned to look at Blaise, surprised. Though he had been friendly with her before, this was his first real overture of friendship. It was almost too good to be true; Hermione had been feeling the lack of a true friend in Slytherin all year, and she actually got along with Blaise. Examining his face closely, she couldn't help but feel that it was an honest gesture. Bereft as it was of his usual ironic smile, his face looked surprisingly vulnerable.

"I'd like that," Hermione said. "But I'm not sure if my parents..."

"They'd be welcome as well, of course," Blaise said diffidently, though a genuine smile touched the corners of his mouth.

"Well then," Hermione said, thinking. She suspected wizards had a rather easier time of long distance travels than muggles did, for Blaise to think that she could agree to something like this offhand. On the other hand, her parents were hardly likely to decline an opportunity to see a functioning wizard household-especially with a vacation to the south of France tossed in to the bargain.

"I'll be happy to come," Hermione said. "But you'll have to owl me with the dates as soon as you can so my parents can make their arrangements."

Blaise nodded, and the two of them completed their circuit of the lake, heading back to the castle in plenty of time for the feast. Hermione felt her steps lighten at the thought of having a real friend in her own house.

Her good mood was buoyed even further when she entered the Great Hall. She was pleased to see that Harry, Ron, and Neville were all present and in good health, but she was especially happy about the green and silver banners decorating the hall. She had always taken pride in her performance at school, but earning good grades was an inherently solitary activity. Helping Slytherin win the House Cup was a victory that was all the sweeter for being shared.

On a more practical level, no matter how much her housemates disliked her, she knew they at least appreciated the points she won for Slytherin. And all of the dislike was momentarily set aside as Dumbledore read out the score: Gryffindor with 341 points, Hufflepuff with 347, Ravenclaw with 411, and Slytherin in the lead with 492.

The cheers at the Slytherin table were momentarily silenced when Dumbledore announced that some final points remained to be awarded. Hermione felt her stomach start to sink as he awarded Neville fifty points for "a tremendous example of recall under pressure" and fifty points to Ron for "the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen these many years." Dumbledore cleared his throat, and for a moment she dared to hope that he was finished.

"To Mr. Harry Potter, for pure love and outstanding courage, I award Gryffindor House sixty points," Dumbledore said, dashing her hopes. "Assuming that my calculations are correct I believe that a change in decoration is in order!"

Gryffindor's table burst into cheers as the banners throughout the Great Hall changed from green and silver to crimson and gold. All around Hermione, Slytherin house sat in stunned silence as they tried to process what had just transpired.

Hermione stared at the head table in disbelief, wondering if Snape would do something to fix this situation. Her head of house did nothing more than grimace slightly in distaste at the headmaster's actions, and the truth sank in: there would be no eleventh hour rescues for Slytherin house.

She mechanically finished eating the food already on her plate, but the always wonderful food of Hogwarts was ashes on her tongue.

ooOoo

Hermione stalked down the corridor of the Hogwarts Express. The three days following the end of year feast had done little to change her disposition, as she-along with most of Slytherin house-had spent that time stewing over how the rug had been pulled out from under them. It hadn't helped that Neville had spent that time successfully avoiding her attempts to pin him down for a conversation. Here on the train, though, there was no Gryffindor-only room to which he could retreat.

She smiled when she finally located the compartment containing Harry, Ron and Neville. She opened the door and greeted the three of them, but the only response she received were a round of wary stares. Neville started to slowly edge away from her.

"Thirty two," Hermione said. Seeing the blank looks on the boys' faces, she continued. "I keep track, you know. Every time I earn points. Add it all up, and on net I earned Slytherin thirty-two points all year."

She sat down across from the boys, fixing them with a glare. "What I want to know is what you lot did to earn fifty points in one night. Fifty points each!"

The cabin remained silent as the three Gryffindors turned to look at each other, apparently weighing their options. Somewhat to her surprise, it was Ron who replied to her question.

"What we did," Ron said, "was stop Quirrel from stealing the Philosopher's Stone and using it to bring Voldemort back to life!"

Hermione stared at Ron for a moment.

"That makes no sense on so many levels," Hermione finally said, "that I have no idea where to begin."

There was no hesitation now as Ron heatedly recounted the events of the last day of exams. How the three of them had ventured down the forbidden third floor corridor, using music to tame the three-headed dog. How they fell into an enormous Devil's Snare, saved only by Neville's quick recognition of the plant. How Harry's skill on a broom had allowed him to retrieve a flying key. Ron's ability to play his way across a life size game of wizarding chess and finally, Harry casting the strongest shield charm he could manage and charging through flames to confront the shade of the man who had killed his parents.

It was a hard tale to believe, but as Ron spoke Hermione saw both Harry and Neville nodding along. Neither of them seemed to be surprised by any of the things Ron was saying, and it was hard to imagine that they would coordinate some elaborate deception just to toy with her.

"That doesn't make sense," Hermione said, trying to think through the implications, "you interfered with Dumbledore's plans and he rewarded you for it."

"Interfered?" Ron asked, affronted. "Quirrel got through all of his defenses and would have gotten the stone if we hadn't showed up."

"Those weren't defenses!" Hermione exclaimed. "Look, if you lock a door and you don't want somebody going through, where do you keep the key?"

The three boys stared at her for a moment before Neville spoke up. "In my pocket?"

"Exactly!" Hermione said. "You don't leave it in the same room with the locked door, no matter how many enchantments you put on it."

"What are you trying to say?" Ron asked.

"I'm trying to say that you didn't get past defenses-you got past challenges that Dumbledore wanted people to get past," Hermione replied. "I'm saying that you didn't do anything that was worth one hundred and sixty points-"

"Will you lay off about the bloody points already?" Harry interrupted, surprisingly vehement. "Quirrel really did try to kill me. When I grabbed him his arm started burning..."

Harry's voice trailed away as he was obviously lost in memory. Hermione remained silent, slightly ashamed that he thought she had been making light of the danger he had faced.

"Look, I don't know why Dumbledore awarded us points. I don't know why he does half the things he does," Harry said. "All I know is that we tried to do the right thing, and we nearly died doing it. If you have a problem with the House Cup, you should be complaining to Dumbledore, not us."

The compartment fell silent after that, and Hermione left without saying another word. She felt bad for upsetting Harry like that, but she couldn't help feeling a little irritation herself that none of the Gryffindors seemed to understand how unfairly her house had been treated.

ooOoo

As it turned out, Hermione's parents were already planning a holiday in France, and it was easy enough to coordinate their plans with Blaise's little get-together. She was a little nervous at how her parents would be received-after all the flak she caught for being a muggleborn, she felt justified in worrying about how two outright muggles would be treated-but she trusted Blaise enough to put that concern aside.

The Grangers parked their rental car by the side of the road when they reached the signpost that only Hermione was able to see. After a little bit of experimentation they found that holding Hermione's hands allowed them to bypass the muggle-repelling charms and approach the gate on the other side of the road. As they neared the property, Hermione felt a new sort of nervousness take hold. Blaise's casual mention of a "cottage" had hardly prepared her for what she saw.

The elaborate wrought-iron gates allowed a clear view of the beautifully tended grounds that were easily the size of the Hogwarts quidditch pitch. The palatial manor was obscured both by distance and by the decorative gardens in front of it, but what Hermione could see of it was exactly the kind of thing you would expect to see in a history book on aristocratic excess.

She had known on some level tht many of her Hogwarts classmates were rich, but this was ridiculous. Taking another look at the gate she saw that what she had taken as a painting of some kind of family crest was actually made up of an inlay of precious stones. Taking a deep breath, Hermione reminded herself that she had been invited here, that she was pretty sure Blaise wanted to be friends, and that if he had brought her out here just to make fun of her plebian background she could hex the stuffing out of him once school started up again.

Feeling a little better, Hermione reached out and tugged on the bell pull by the gate to announce their arrival. There was no human response, but the gate swung open before them. It was spooky, but Muggles had automatic doors of their own, so her parents weren't too startled. When a horse drawn carriage pulled up before them-driving itself, with no horses in sight-she could tell they were a little more taken aback.

Hermione led her parents aboard the carriage, and joined them in admiring the grounds as the carriage guided itself down the winding road to the manor house. It was lovely-she particularly liked the topiary that had been trimmed to form a remarkably lifelike centaur-but not a little intimidating.

She was glad that they had at least tried to dress appropriately for what was shaping up as a rather posh garden party. Her father was wearing a linen suit that her mother insisted looked quite sharp, while her mother was wearing a lavendar sundress that Hermione liked. Hermione was wearing her Hogwarts robes, which also served as her work robes, dress robes, and hanging about the house robes.

A stunningly beautiful witch was waiting for them by the front steps. Hermione felt a stab of jealousy as she took in the woman's perfectly formed features and the way her flawless olive complexion was set off by the pale robe-dress combination that she wore with a certain effortless elegance. As soon as the Grangers had disembarked from the carriage she greeted them with a curtsy.

"Thank you so much for coming. I'm Arianna Zabini," the woman said, confirming Hermione's guess that she was Blaise's mother. "You must be the Grangers."

There was a moment of silence, before Hermione's mother elbowed her father in the side. Clearing his throat, he gathered himself and replied.

"Yes, I'm Sebastian. This is my wife, Rosalind, and of course my daughter, Hermione."

"Of course. Blaise has told me so much about you," Ms. Zabini said, giving Hermione such a genuine smile that she felt her jealousy subside in the face of such honest warmth. "He says you're just full of surprises."

"Mostly good ones, I hope," Hermione said, blushing.

"Oh, I'm sure," Ms. Zabini said, before putting a finger to her chin in thought. "Hermione, Rosalind, Sebastian... surely-"

"Our parents are rather passionate fans of the Bard," Hermione's father said, relaxing as he told the familiar story. "Our friends gave us a hard time when we got together..."

"But it did give us something to talk about on our first date," Hermione's mother said, "and when things worked out so well between us we decided to continue the family tradition."

"How delightful," Ms. Zabini said, her laughter chiming like silver bells.

"I'm surprised you spotted the connection so quickly," Hermione's father commented. "When I found out there was a whole separate school for magic, I thought there would be separate books and plays as well."

"Well, there are some plays that the Ministry won't allow us to publish for muggle consumption because of the Statute of Secrecy," Ms. Zabini replied. "But at the end of the day, we are English as well as being witches and wizards, and Shakespeare is quite popular."

There was a moment of silence as the Grangers nodded in understanding before she continued.

"As a matter of fact, I believe the theater on Colter Alley is putting on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream next month. I'm afraid the acting isn't quite ready for Covent Garden, but the special effects are, well, magical," Ms. Zabini said, before smiling impishly. "And I should mention that if Hermione has trouble finding the right lad for her at Hogwarts, I'd be happy to introduce her to Blaise's cousin Laertes."

All of the adults shared a chuckle at that, and Hermione felt herself blush deeply. Somewhat to her surprise, Ms. Zabini was the first to notice her discomfort.

"Oh dear, Hermione, you didn't come all the way out here to listen to us adults giving you a hard time," she said, shaking her head sympathetically. "Blaise and the others are in the garden around back."

Hermione thanked Ms. Zabini and scampered off around the side of the house, happy both to seek out the company of children her own age and to avoid the flood of shopeworn Shakespeare-related humor that Ms. Zabini had unwittingly summoned. The rear gardens were if anything even larger than the gardens in front of the manor, but fortunately Blaise and his friends were easy to spot. They had laid out a blanket on a clear spot in the grass and were in the process of sharing out food from a picnic basket.

As she drew nearer Hermione recognized Daphne Greengrass along with Blaise and two boys that looked familiar, but whose names she didn't know. Blaise looked up with a smile as she approached and introduced her to Ernie MacMillain and Terry Boot.

"Lovely to see you all," Hermione said, before turning to Blaise. "I didn't know you had any friends outside of Slytherin."

"I did have friends before I went to Hogwarts, you know," Blaise said, chuckling. He gestured to indicate the four of them as he continued. "Our parents all run in the same social circles, so we were always seated together at the same kiddy tables."

"Once you're forced to spend enough time with Blaise he kind of grows on you. Like a fungus," Terry commented, pulling an entire roast turkey out of the picnic basket. Hermione raised an eyebrow at the rather casual use of a magical item.

"That's funny, I've noticed that hanging around with Terry has rather the opposite effect," Blaise said, casually snagging a drumstick off of the turkey and dropping it on his plate.

"Don't mind those two. Sarcasm is just how they flirt," Ernie interrupted, ignoring the dirty looks he received from the other boys. "Granger... say, you're the girl that made Draco cry, right?"

"I wouldn't know," Hermione said, shooting Blaise and Daphne a dirty look, "seeing as anything like that would be the sort of thing that doesn't leave the common room."

"Come off it, Granger. House solidarity is all well and good in school, but you're among friends here," Daphne said. Hermione looked at the girl in surprise at the casual assumption of friendship. "Besides, we already told them the gist of it."

"Well... in that case," Hermione said, "He didn't cry. But he did make the most hilarious face."

Hermione stuck her lower lip out and did her best to capture the gobsmacked expression Draco had worn at the end of her duel. Blaise jumped in to correct her, and soon Daphne was giving her own contribution. After quick consultation with Daphne's hand mirror, Hermione had to agree that the other girl had done the best job of capturing the combination of humiliation, shock, and anger that had had Draco on the edge of tears.

The other two were howling with laughter by that point. Hermione got the impression that Draco was not well liked.

"I'm glad somebody stood up to that ponce," Ernie said, before looking at Hermione seriously. "Watch yourself next year, Granger. Malfoy's never forget."

"Everybody keeps saying that," Hermione said, feeling a little frustrated. "I don't understand what the big deal is-Draco's an idiot."

"It's not Draco so much as his father," Terry said. "He's the most powerful wizard in Britain, after Dumbledore."

"Maybe after Dumbledore," Blaise said darkly. "I mean, obviously Dumbledore is more capable, magically speaking. But Malfoy has the Wizengamot in his back pocket, Minister Fudge checks with him before he decides what to order for breakfast, and he practically controls the Hogwarts Board of Governors."

"He was a Death Eater, you know. Some people say he was You-Know-Who's right hand man," Ernie said. "And even still he walked into court after the war and claimed he was under the Imperius the whole time, brazen as you please. They let him go free and now he practically runs the government."

"Some people even say," Daphne said, leaning forward and whispering as if she was about to say something truly taboo, "that he pulled the Dark Lord's strings the same way he leads Fudge around now."

"If he's so powerful," Hermione said, feeling some fear creep into her voice, "what can I do?"

"Like we've been saying, just watch yourself," Blaise said. "Lucius Malfoy isn't going to personally intervene in a schoolyard fight as long as you don't actually maim Draco. But that's not to say he won't buy Draco an advantage somehow."

"Or teach him some Dark Arts," Ernie said.

"Or put some pressure on Professor Snape to help him out," Daphne said.

"All right, all right, I'll be careful," Hermione said, holding her hands up in surrender.

The other students took her cue to change the subject, and as they settled in to eat conversation turned to what sounded like a well-worn argument about who was going to top the Quidditch league table this year. Hermione let the conversation wash over her as she ate, and couldn't keep herself from worrying about just what sort of welcome she was going to receive when she returned to Hogwarts.

ooOoo

Hermione's return to Hogwarts was rather anti-climactic. She picked up her books at Diagon Alley without incident-including, oddly, an autobiography of Gilderoy Lockhart to go along with the Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two that served as the text for the rest of the wand based magic she'd be learning-and enjoyed a quiet train ride with Neville. At the opening feast she sat with Blaise and Daphne, ignoring the rest of the second years clustered around Draco Malfoy, and enjoyed a pleasant meal. The same pattern continued to hold after the feast. Draco shot her some dirty looks in the common room, but didn't actually say anything to her as the second years prepared for Potions, their first class of the new term.

Hermione and Neville quickly re-established the rapport that they had built up over the previous year. Neville had progressed to the point that her supervision was more of a matter of fine tuning their potion to perfection rather than acting as disaster prevention. Their Stomach Settling Draught was coming along nicely when Professor Snape interrupted her concentration.

"What was it that you just added to the potion, Miss Granger?" Snape asked.

"Three pufferfish eyes, sir," Hermione replied.

"And can you tell me why?" Snape asked.

"Because that was the next step in the instructions," Hermione said.

"Are you in the habit of following every written instruction that you find, Miss Granger?" Snape asked. It was obviously a rhetorical question, and Hermione kept quiet. "Pretend for a moment that you did not have a book on which to rely, and explain your actions."

Hermione just stared at the professor, unable to come up with a reply. She fought down a sense of rising panic at the unfamiliar situation, and tried to think things through logically. The book had said to add the eyes as soon as the potion turned blue, but it was silent as to why. She didn't recall the extended directions saying anything in particular about the pufferfish eyes. Hermione's thoughts were interrupted as Snape sighed theatrically.

"Why three pufferfish eyes, not two and not four?" Snape asked. "Why add them now, and not five minutes later?"

Hermione felt her eyes begin to sting with unshed tears, and looked down to try and compose herself. Never in her life had she found herself unable to answer a teacher's question, and she was finding the experience perfectly miserable. The one thing she had always had going for her was her reputation as the student who knew all the answers, and Professor Snape seemed dead set on taking that away.

She at least consoled herself with the thought that nobody else in the class would be able to answer the question. If she hadn't come across the answer in all of her reading, there was no way anybody else had. She was pulled out of her thoughts as Snape called on Draco Malfoy.

"Using two eyes would leave the potion underpowered, while using four could create a potion that stops all digestive activity entirely," Draco said, sounding perfectly at ease. "If they were added any sooner they would react violently with the frog spleens, while if they were added later the frog spleens would be too diluted by the time the potion was finished."

"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy," Professor Snape said. "Two points for Slytherin for managing to find information somewhere besides a textbook."

Hermione stared at Draco in shock, nearly forgetting her own humiliation. She only snapped out of it when she reacted automatically to prevent Neville from stirring the potion one too many times.

ooOoo

Quirinus Quirrel had been a disaster as a Defense Professor. Always decked out in that ridiculous turban, he was a nervous wreck even in his own classroom. His stutter made his lectures difficult to follow but couldn't obscure the sheer uselessness of their content. He also, if Harry was to be believed, had made a concerted effort to steal the Philosopher's Stone and revive Lord Voldemort.

Gilderoy Lockhart was a significant improvement. He strode into the classroom with the air of a man used to being obeyed, and as he surveyed the second year Slytherins the students all fell silent without Lockhart needing to say a word. Standing at the front of the classroom, he had such an air of absolute confidence that Hermione had no doubt that she was looking at a man who could achieve anything he set his mind to.

Also, his hair was perfect.

"Good morning, class. I'm Gilderoy Lockhart," he said, smiling at them to acknowledge the absurdity of pretending they didn't know who he was, "and I am your new instructor in Defense Against the Dark Arts. I am also the only professor who made you buy his own book. Can any of you tell me why I did that?"

Even Hermione knew better than to raise her hand for a loaded question like that, but she heard a few murmurs. Apparently Lockhart had sharpers ears than she did, and picked out one of the individual speakers.

"Mr. Zabini, you have a theory?" Lockhart asked.

"I figure the royalties couldn't hurt," Blaise replied. A titter of laughter swept through the classroom, and even Lockhart smiled.

"Two points to Slytherin for honesty Mr. Zabini, but I'm afraid you're incorrect," Lockhart said. "Let me ask another way: what's the most advanced spell ever mentioned in the whole book?"

Hermione raised her hand immediately, eager to redeem herself from the disaster in Potions. Lockhart looked surprised, but called on her.

"The homorphus charm you used to defeat the Wagga Wagga Werewolf, sir," Hermione said.

"Two points to Slytherin, Miss Granger, although I must admit I intended that as a rhetorical question," Lockhart said, chuckling. "For those of you who have not yet finished reading your textbook, the homorphus charm is a spell you'll need to learn for your OWLs-it reverses human transfiguration as well as the animagus transformation. It turns out that when used on a transformed werewolf, it will partially revert them back to human form."

Lockhart shook his head, lost in thought for a moment.

"That was a nasty business. Although in fairness, he was trying to eat me at the time," Lockhart said, before returning his focus to the present. "You all knew who I was before I became your professor. Everything that made me famous is in Magical Me, and yet the most advanced spell in there is one that fifth year students are expected to learn. I shan't ask Mr. Zabini what he thinks of that."

Lockhart smiled and paused to let the class finish laughing.

"When we think about defense, too often we think of Albus Dumbledore, wielding the kind of magic that most of us will never witness, let alone master," Lockhart continued, the students settling down as he grew more somber. "But the truth is, often the most important thing you can do is keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. Manage that, and you'll often find that a simple charm is all you need."

Lockhart looked over the classroom as his words sank in, then flashed them a quick grin. "And if you're as unlucky as I am about stumbling into dangerous situations, somebody might ask you to write your own autobiography some day."

With that, Lockhart walked over to the corner of the room and yanked the cover off of an object that turned out to be a large birdcage. Trapped inside was a gaggle of eight inch high blue humanoids that could only be Cornish Pixies. Agitated by the sudden exposure to the room, they were flittering about the cage and chattering at each other in voices that were too high pitched for Hermione to make out individual words.

Lockhart walked back over to his desk and waited until all of the students had turned their attention back to him. Reaching into the inner pocket of his immaculate dress robes, he withdrew his wand and held it up for their inspection.

"Those are fresh caught Cornish Pixies," Lockhart said, "and this is my wand."

Reaching down, he opened a drawer on the desk and placed his wand inside. Slamming the drawer shut, he walked around in front of the desk and leaned back against it, completely relaxed. Hermione felt her heart racing in anticipation; glancing around the room, she saw that even Crabbe and Goyle were leaning forward with rapt attention.

"Wands out," Lockhart ordered.

Ten Slytherins moved as one, bringing their wands to the ready. Hermione couldn't quite believe what was happening-in all of last year, they had never even tried casting spells at a moving target. Surely Lockhart couldn't mean for them to tackle hostile creatures without any backup from an adult?

"Now, I want you all to know that while Cornish Pixies are devilishly annoying, there's nothing they can break that Madame Pomfrey can't fix," Lockhart said. "That said, the Gryffindors completed this exercise without anybody going to the hospital wing."

There was a palpable increase in tension throughout the room as house pride was brought into the equation. Hermione spared a thought to hope that they wouldn't lose any points if a pixie died.

"The exercise begins once they're out of the cage, and ends once they're all back in," Lockhart said. "Miss Granger, I want you to cast an unlocking charm in three seconds. You have until then to decide what your next spell will be."

Hermione nodded and, on the count of three, unlocked the cage. The door sprang open the instant her spell reached it and a wave of electric blue mayhem poured out into the classroom.

ooOoo

"That man is bloody insane!" Blaise exclaimed, throwing up his hands as he kept pace with Hermione on their walk back to the common room.

"Language," Hermione chided. "And I think it's nice that he wants us to get some practical experience."

"Practical experience? Did you see what those things did to my robes?" Blaise asked incredulously. "And his robes? And he kept smiling the whole time! I'm telling you, he's a couple gobstones short of a set."

Hermione stopped and turned to look at Blaise as they entered the common room. His tie was rather badly askew, and a large rip had been torn down the left side of his robe. It was balanced on the other side by a rather impressive ink stain. His normally immaculate hair was badly dishevelled, and overall he gave the impression of a man at the end of his tether.

Hermione herself suffered from her usual untameably bushy hair, but was otherwise unmarked by her experience with the Cornish Pixies. It had turned out that a full body bind was quite capable of taking them out of the air, and that was one charm she could snap out without even really thinking about it.

"I'm sure a wizard like Professor Lockhart can repair his robes easily enough," Hermione said. "I think you're just upset that you had such a hard time performing under pressure."

"What? That's ridiculous..." Blaise replied, trailing off as Hermione turned and headed for the girls' dormitory.

She swapped out her defense books for her potions text, and headed back out for her meeting with Neville. She was surprised when Blaise met her at the door. She was even more surprised that he was already changed into a pristine new robe, and his hair was back to its usual arrangement. She raised a questioning eyebrow at his attempt to block her path.

"Well, you've met my friends. It's only fair that I meet yours," Blaise said, before grinning. "Besides, if you were able to get Longbottom to stop blowing up cauldrons, just imagine what will happen when you tutor a talent like me."

Hermione sighed, but acquiesced and let Blaise follow her as she made her way to the abandoned classroom that served as her and Neville's study spot. She was a little surprised that Blaise didn't know Neville already. Her understanding was that the Longbottom name carried a lot of weight, and she would have expected Neville and Blaise to run in the same social circles. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a tremendous surprise if traditionally Gryffindor families kept different companies than the families that leaned Slytherin.

When they arrived at the classroom Hermione was taken aback to find that not only was Neville waiting for her, Ron and Harry were present as well. Blaise laughed at the sight.

"Just how many Gryffindors are only passing potions because of you, Granger?" Blaise asked once he calmed down.

"We were able to pass just fine on our own, you-" Ron said, cutting himself off when Harry put a hand on his shoulder.

"We passed," Harry said, "but if Snape's stepping up the pressure like he did in that class I think we're all in trouble if we don't work together."

"You don't have to worry about that," Blaise said, still clearly amused.

"Why?" Harry asked. "I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not exactly Snape's favorite student."

"Exactly," Blaise said. "Professor Snape only rides a student like that if he thinks they have potential."

Hermione would have been amused at the combination of relief and offense that was playing across the face of the two Gryffindors if she hadn't been overwhelmed by her own feelings of relief. When she had managed to earn points from Professor Snape at the end of her first year, she thought she had managed to break through and earn the demanding professor's respect. Their last potions class had rather violently dispelled that notion, but what Blaise was saying suggested that she might actually have succeeded. The way Professor Snape showed that respect was a little twisted, but it was better than having him think she was a fool.

"Are you sure?" Hermione asked.

"Absolutely. My cousin gave me the whole rundown on Professor Snape once I got sorted into Slytherin," Blaise said. "The last guy he gave that much hell wound up as Head Boy."

"In that case," Ron said, clearly pleased at the idea of avoiding extra potions study, "I reckon we'll take our chances on our own again."

The two boys darted out of the room, leaving only a fading wish of "Good luck, Hermione" echoing behind them as they left.

"You know, I think Ron might actually be some kind of genius," Neville said. The normally good natured boy sounded a little bitter. "He passes all his classes, and I've never seen him study."

"You can say a lot of things about the Weasleys, but they're no slouches when it comes to magic," Blaise said, clapping Neville companionably on the shoulder. "So, Granger, what do we do now?"

"You two work on making the potion for next class," Hermione said. "I'll watch what you're doing and hopefully we'll wind up with two perfect potions."

"Only two?" Blaise asked. "You're just going to be supervising?"

"Not exactly," Hermione said, smiling grimly as she set up her own cauldron. "I'm also going to be figuring out the reason behind every single line of the instructions."

ooOoo

Harry looked around curiously as Lockhart ushered him into his office. The walls were fairly well plastered with photographs of Lockhart. Harry saw one in which he was exchanging a vigorous handshake with a short man in a bowler hat; several posed in front of the bodies of monsters Harry recognized from Magical Me; and one that had apparently been taken from the cover of Witch Weekly magazine. In the midst of all of the photographs a small trophy case had pride of place on the wall, displaying three medals against a background of black velvet. Harry recognized one as the Order of Merlin, but the other two were inscribed in foreign languages that Harry didn't recognize.

Tearing his gaze from the walls, Harry saw that Lockhart's desk was piled high with correspondence. He also saw Lockhart regarding him with an amused expression and felt himself flush at being caught gawking. He still wasn't totally sold on Lockhart as a professor-and if he heard Lavender sighing over his hair one more time, he might be moved to do something drastic-but hexing Cornish Pixies had been jolly good fun, and he didn't want Lockhart thinking he was just another star-struck admirer.

"Thank you for coming, Harry. I believe this detention should prove helpful to you," Lockhart said. "I know the pile may appear daunting, but you'll find that once you have a system in place you can get through it surprisingly quickly."

Harry looked back at the pile of letters in surprise. Lockhart wanted help going through his fan mail? Harry wasn't sure exactly what he was expecting out of this detention, but that wasn't it.

"Helpful how?" Harry asked.

"Why, with your own fan mail, of course!" Lockhart responded. "Now, what we're going to do is put the letters from people who know me aside for me to read later. The letters from fans go on the table here, they'll get form letters with an autographed photo. The other stuff goes in the vanishing bin. I had Gringotts set up a ward that filters out the really nasty stuff, but every now and then something sneaks through."

Harry decided against disabusing Lockhart of his mistaken assumption regarding Harry's letters-it really wasn't any of his business-and sat down to go through the mail. By the time he had been through five of the missives, he was already starting to see the pattern. Apparently Lockhart was quite popular among bored housewitches. Some of the letters were notable for the slightly creepy level of familiarity they assumed between Lockhart and the writer, but for the most part they were just pathetic.

Harry steadily filled the "form letter" pile, wondering when he was going to see something different. He was twelve letters in when a photograph slid out of the envelope along with the letter. Picking it up, Harry saw a pretty blonde witch looking out at him. Giving him a wink, she reached for the neckline on her robe and-

"I think those are going to have to go in the bin," Lockhart said, snatching the photo out of Harry's hands and tossing it down to be vanished. "Sorry, Harry, but I don't want to find out the hard way if Minerva can still give me detention."

Harry blushed but didn't respond directly, instead turning back to the pile of mail. He had just settled back into his rhythm when he encountered his first of the "other" letters, an angry missive covered in itching powder. Fortunately Lockhart had a vial of Essence of Murtlap on hand, which soon had the itching under control.

Harry couldn't work through the mail until his skin had finished absorbing the soothing lotion, and he looked around the office again while he took a break. A photo on Lockhart's desk caught his attention: it appeared to be a photo of an empty space until a young Lockhart swept into view. He was wearing Ravenclaw quidditch robes, and had the quaffle tucked under his arm. A boy in Slytherin robes attempted to tackle him, but Lockhart evaded him smoothly, laughing as he flew on. Before he could reach the edge of the photo a bludger caught him in the stomach and doubled him over, sending the quaffle flying off the edge of the photo. It was the by far the youngest photo of Lockhart on the wall, and the only one that didn't show him in a moment of triumph.

"You used to play quidditch, sir?" Harry asked, curious about the photo. He didn't recall any mention of the sport in Lockhart's biography, though he hadn't yet read the whole thing.

"Saw that photo, did you?" Lockhart said, before glancing at the clock on the wall. "I think you've been through enough mail, Harry. You can head back to your common room now, or you can stick around and let me tell you a story that isn't in any of my books."

Now even more curious, Harry stayed right where he was. Lockhart smiled when he saw Harry's decision, leaning forward a little conspiratorially before he began speaking.

"The truth is, Harry, when I was your age I was never the most diligent student. If I showed you my OWL and NEWT results, you'd be shocked-my mother certainly was!" Lockhart said, chuckling. Apparently time had eased the sting of his poor grades. "I spent every waking moment I could out on a broom. I wanted nothing more than to be a member of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. It was my dream."

"And after years of hard work you made the team?" Harry asked, gesturing at the picture.

"Not exactly," Lockhart said. "You see, I unfortunately lacked any natural talent for flying. Hard work is important, but the sad fact is that sometimes hard work alone isn't enough to get you what you want."

Lockhart was looking at his scar, and Harry had a feeling he wasn't just talking about quidditch. It was strange, when he thought about it-a lot of wizards had worked hard to fight Voldemort, and had paid the price for it. And after all of that Voldemort tried to kill him and the spell just bounced off. Harry did his best not to dwell on the subject, but there were nights that it gnawed at him: why had he survived where so many had died?

"In any event," Lockhart continued, "the captain appreciated the effort I put in, so I was made reserve chaser. I thought I might have a chance to move up when the whole starting line graduated at once, but that was the year Gwenog and her friends joined the team."

"Rough luck," Harry said, nodding sympathetically.

Gwenog Jones, Meredith Alverston, and Heather Barclay made up the core of the Holyhead Harpies dynasty that was currently dominating the professional quidditch league. Harry had learned this fact at the Burrow, where he had also learned that Ginny's favorite method of winding Ron up was to wear her Harpies gear or quote Jones's career statistics at him. Apparently the Chudley Cannons had passed on drafting Jones when she came into the league, and ever since she had made a special effort to run up the score whenever she played against them.

"It wasn't all bad. I was a part of a team that had won the Quidditch Cup four years running, after all," Lockhart said. "Gwenog liked my work ethic; she'd even hold me up as a role model for the more talented flyers sometimes. I got along well with everyone on the team, and they thought of me as something of a good luck charm. Then came the last match of my last year, against Slytherin."

Lockhart gestured at the photo and then paused, watching it cycle through a couple of times as though savoring the memory.

"You have to understand, Slytherin were rubbish that year," Lockhart said. "We had already locked up the Cup on points, but Gwenog was determined that we go undefeated as well. She could be quite intense, you know."

"Quidditch captains are all a bit mad, I think," Harry said, thinking of the practice schedule Oliver Wood had recently unveiled. Lockhart nodded absently, his mind still in the past.

"It was a beautiful day for a match. I still remember how blue the sky was. We jumped all over Slytherin from the start and really beat the stuffing out of them. The game kept dragging on and on-I didn't realize it at the time, but our seeker had deliberately passed up two chances to catch the snitch," Lockhart said. "It must have been three hours into the game, we were ahead 370 to 120, when Heather said she had to leave the game with a leg cramp. If an injury happens during the match, of course, a team can bring in a player from the reserve. Gwenog was furious when she discovered they had orchestrated the whole thing to get me onto the pitch, but that didn't stop her from calling my name."

"What happened?" Harry asked, caught up in the story.

"Well I was tickled pink to fly out there, of course, and the whole Ravenclaw section cheered like lunatics. That was my first real taste of fame; it felt like the whole stadium was calling out my name," Lockhart said, a faraway look in his eyes. "Then Slytherin rattled off eight goals in about five minutes, and the crowd started calling for my head. Fortunately Wendy was able to catch the snitch before things got too far out of hand."

"I'm sorry it didn't go better," Harry said. He could only imagine what would have happened if his quidditch debut last year had been so disastrous.

"Don't be, Harry, that was my favorite memory of my years at Hogwarts," Lockhart said. "After I graduated I turned my efforts to an area better suited to my talents, and I daresay things worked out rather well."

Looking around at the visual record of Lockhart's successes, Harry was hard pressed to disagree. Despite a relatively undistinguished career at Hogwarts, Lockhart had managed to fashion himself into one of the most famous and well-respected wizards in the world.

Harry could only wonder if any of his classmates had such hidden depths.

ooOoo

Hermione spent the first Saturday of the school year in the Slytherin common room, deeply immersed in potions reading. Professor Snape might mock her for drawing her knowledge from books, but she didn't really have other paths to knowledge open to her. It wasn't like she was receiving personal tutoring from a potions master, unlike some people. She paused in her reading to look up and glare at the back of Draco Malfoy's head.

Draco chose that moment to turn around, catching her gaze. He responded with a smirk.

"You can read all you like, Granger," Draco said, "but you'll never be a real wizard."

"I think we found out who's the real expert with a wand last year, Draco," Hermione replied, doing her best to keep her temper. The verbal barb struck home, and Draco snarled in response.

"Just you wait, Granger," Draco said, patting the pile of books by his side possessively, "you'll get yours this year."

Before Hermione could reply, their conversation was interrupted by a veritable stampede of students exiting the boys' dormitory. Most of them were clad in athletic gear, and all of them were carrying brooms.

"Oi, Draco, you coming?" An older boy that Hermione didn't realize asked. "Tryouts start in half an hour, and you don't want to know what Flint does to people who show up late."

"Already?" Draco asked, glancing up at the clock in surprise. "Of course I'm coming."

With that, Draco dashed back into the dormitory, emerging soon after with a broom slung over his shoulder. The large group of boys left, along with every other student in the common room, off to either try out for the Quidditch team or watch the excitement. Hermione shook her head and turned back to her reading. She never understood her father's fanatical devotion to football-the Latics were never even any good-and Hogwarts' obsession with quidditch similarly left her cold.

After a moment Hermione looked up and confirmed that Draco had left his books behind in the common room in his haste to make it to the tryout in time. She fought with indecision for only a moment before she moved to look them over. Considering all the dire warnings she had heard about the Malfoys, it was silly to allow her scruples to interfere with a chance to glean any information about Draco's attempt at revenge. Besides, the Slytherin ethos largely held that items left in the common room were fair game.

Most of the books were simply copies of the mandatory books for second year students. The only exception was a little black book, clearly a diary. Flipping it open, Hermione's hopes of finding a secret grimoire were dashed when she found that the pages inside were blank. Closer examination revealed the name "T. M. Riddle" written on the very first page, but none of the detection spells of which she was capable could reveal anything special about the book.

She put the books back where she had found them and went back to her reading. Finding herself distracted after reading a few more pages, she finally gave in to a rather petty impulse. Taking her quill with her, she walked back over to the pile of books, opened the diary to a random page in the middle, and wrote "You're a prat, Malfoy" in large block letters.

Hermione was about to close the book and consider the minor prank complete when the words she had written vanished in a swirl of ink. After a moment, ink reformed on the page under her shocked gaze: "_What do you have against Abraxas?_"

Putting aside her surprise, Hermione found herself compelled by her curiosity to write a reply: "Who?"

She didn't have to wait long for a reply.

"_Abraxas is the only Malfoy I know. Truth be told, he is a bit of a prat, though none dare say it to his face._"

The name sounded familiar, but Hermione couldn't place where she had heard it before. Loading up her quill again, she wrote the next question that came to mind, "Who are you, exactly?"

"_My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?_"

"I found it in the Slytherin common room," Hermione wrote, then continued writing even before her previous sentence faded away as a thought occurred to her. "Do you think you would be able to teach somebody how to duel better?"

"_I could teach many things. I was Head Boy, after all._"

Hermione's hands shook with excitement as her mind raced. One of Draco's ancestors must have known Tom and managed to get his hands on his diary. After Draco's humiliation last year, his father must have decided that it was worth risking such a precious possession in order to Draco with an edge in school. She was holding the Malfoy's personal tutor in her hands.

The opportunity was simply too good to pass up. Racing back to her bookbag, she withdrew one of her unused notebooks and transfigured it into a copy of the diary in her hands. Such a simple transfiguration should last a long time, and even if it failed the notebook was hardly distinctive. She replaced Draco's books where she had found them, with the fake diary in place of the book in her hands.

Turning back to her bag, she withdrew her day planner, pausing briefly to admire the dragonhide replacement cover Neville gave her. Tapping it with her wand, the cover slipped off easily, and with another simple application of magic it molded itself to cover the diary.

Switch complete, she took up her quill and wrote in the diary once more.

"I'm sorry I forgot to introduce myself earlier, Tom. My name is Hermione Granger. I hope we can be friends."

ooOoo

AN: A note re: the diary. It was created in Riddle's fifth year, but contained some memories that appear to post date its creation. I'm assuming Voldemort updated it at some point, but that it can't do the memory display thing for anything past mid-sixth year or so. It also did seem generally aware of current events (like Harry vanquishing Voldemort) so I think it's fair to assume it knows Riddle made Head Boy.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: As always, I appreciate your reviews. I especially like hearing what worked for you, what didn't, and why.

AN2: Just a friendly reminder, people sometimes lie. Especially bad people. And the best lies often contain an element of truth.

ooOoo

Hermione had thought that the diary was rather stuck up-it had managed to work the fact that Tom was once Head Boy into conversation at the earliest opportunity-but that impression was dispelled as she and Tom continued to exchange notes. He was friendly and downright chatty, although that was perhaps to be expected when nobody had written to him in nearly fifty years.

Over the course of their correspondence, Hermione became convinced that the diary was a valuable historical artifact even aside from its potential value as a tutor. It was fascinating to be able to have a real time conversation with somebody who had attended Hogwarts during the second world war.

Tom (the diary) had explained that Tom (the student) had created the diary shortly after the London Blitz, which had corresponded with the rise of Grindelwald to terrorize the wizarding world. He had designed the diary to hold a repository of his memories and a simulation of his personality in an effort to ensure that a piece of him would remain in the world if he should die in the war.

Tom had kept the diary up to date until shortly after he graduated. At that point he had lost possession of the diary, and nobody else had written in the diary until Hermione had tried to leave a little message for Malfoy. She was curious about what had happened to Tom, and why Draco had not yet tried using the book-although Draco was anything but a diligent student-but for the moment Hermione was focused on more important things.

Once the initial pleasantries were out of the way, Hermione wasted little time peppering the diary with questions about potions errors. She started with questions she knew the answer to, making sure Tom knew what he was talking about before moving on to the mistakes she hadn't had time to test yet. Tom answered her readily enough for the first nine questions, finally interposing a question when she showed no signs of stopping.

"You're worrying too much about what might go wrong. If you just follow the directions for your potions, you'll be fine."

"Professor Snape expects me to know all of this," Hermione wrote back, before detailing the questioning she had been subjected to in the year's first potions class.

"I suppose they must have changed the curriculum since I was a student." Tom replied after a moment.

Tom was happy enough to continue answering her questions, although he also referred her to some library books with relevant information (the most helpful turned out to be Alexis Longbottom's Collected Potions Disasters). Between Tom's help and her own work in the lab, Hermione was able to handle Professor Snape's questions over the next few weeks. The potions master didn't show any signs of letting up, but Hermione did notice that Draco gradually appeared less and less eager to jump in and correct her as she fielded question after question without making a mistake.

Tom's help allowed her to continue working ahead in her other classes, not just potions. Staying ahead of the second year curriculum was taxing-she frequently found herself suffering from stress headaches, and often felt like she could use more sleep-but Hermione stuck it out. She knew that her spellcasting was ahead of what her peers could manage, but she also knew that her standing within Slytherin depended on not letting anybody catch up to her. She would have liked to earn more points in potions, but her triumph at the end of first year had been the result of months of experimentation. She didn't have the time to repeat that effort while also trying to master the increasingly complex charms and transfiguration work that was expected of older students.

Before she knew it October had come and gone and it was time for the first Quidditch match of the year. Hermione didn't really like the sport, and she wasn't inclined to attend despite Blaise's entreaties, but Tom suggested that it might be a good idea to go. When her books were telling her that she was spending too much time buried in books, even Hermione was able to take a hint.

Blaise and Daphne escorted Hermione out to the pitch. Hermione mostly tuned out Blaise's cheerful explanation of quidditch strategems until he mentioned a name in passing that jumped out at her.

"Wait, I have to cheer for Malfoy?" Hermione asked.

"He is our Seeker," Blaise said, drily. "In completely unrelated news, Lucius Malfoy donated a whole team's worth of top of the line brooms to our squad."

"Right, that tears it," Hermione said, turning to walk back to the castle. She stopped when Blaise put a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, Malfoy's not exactly my favorite person in the world either, you know," Blaise said. "It doesn't mean you can't enjoy the game. Most of the action doesn't even involve the Seeker, anyway."

"But he bought his way onto the team! It's a disgrace," Hermione protested.

"Please, Hermione, I thought Blaise taught you better than that," Daphne said, "Slytherin loves a winner. Leave the whining about fairness to the Hufflepuffs."

"Whether you win because you challenged some unprepared schmuck to a duel, or you win because daddy bought out the competition, the important thing is the winning," Blaise said, shrugging. "Mom says it's better to learn that life's not fair sooner rather than later."

Hermione looked between them, torn. On the one hand, she had benefitted from the Slytherin tendency to unite behind a winner. However much flak she got for being muggleborn, it would have been much worse if she weren't personally responsible for the lion's share of the points earned by Slytherins in her year. On the other hand, something about Draco having such a coveted position handed to him because of his father just irked her.

"Fine," Hermione said, acquiescing. "I'll come with you guys and cheer for the rest of the team. I'm not going to let Malfoy ruin such a nice day."

With the argument resolved, the three of them made their way to the seating reserved for second year students. The seats were quite close to the field, while the older students sat farther back and higher up. The logic behind the seating arrangement became clear when the players took the field; the center of the action was at eye level to the older students, while Hermione had to crane her neck to keep the chasers in her sight.

Even watching the players fly around in warm-ups was dizzying. Hermione had been pretty proud of herself for finally managing to get up to twenty-five miles an hour on a broom-though that feat hadn't been enough to prevent her flying class from ruining an otherwise perfect report card-but the players were casually darting around at speeds that made her best effort seem like a slow walk. When the game began, the players elevated their movement to another level.

Hermione found herself enthralled by the action. It was one thing to read about it in Quidditch Through the Ages, it was quite another to see a game played in person. Quidditch was a sport that played out in three dimensions, and the players wove around and between each other in a dizzying display of coordination and nerve. Hermione winced along with the rest of Slytherin when Montague took a bludger straight to the gut. The impact echoed through the stadium, and the chaser had a hard time holding on to the broom. Fortunately he had passed off the quaffle before taking the hit, and Pucey was able to dart around the Gryffindor Keeper to open the scoring, 10-0 to Slytherin.

She had a hard time taking in everything that was going on, but it seemed that the Slytherin team was controlling the pace of play. Most of the action was happening on the Gryffindor half of the pitch, and when the score reached 30-0 the Slytherin stands broke out into a coordinated cheer. Hermione couldn't quite figure out the words of the song, but she enthusiastically joined in the clapping when they finished. The score was 60-0 in Slytherin's favor when the Gryffindor team took a time out.

"Is quidditch always so..." Hermione trailed off, not sure how to complete the sentence. Somewhat to her surprise, Daphne smiled warmly in response.

"It's quite impressive to watch in person, no?" Daphne said, "The new brooms are making our team look better than usual, but quidditch is always pretty exciting."

"It helps too that one of the bludgers is going after Potter like he stole something," Blaise said. "I wonder who managed that?"

"You think Draco could have jinxed the equipment?" Daphne asked, surprised.

"Not usually. Quidditch gear has some pretty serious anti-tampering magic," Blaise replied. "Still, somebody got to that bludger. Maybe Malfoy has hidden depths."

"Wouldn't Malfoy want to prove he's a better flier than Harry?" Hermione asked. "Cheating like that would be admitting he can't win a fair competition."

"I think he just wants to win any way he can," Blaise said. "I don't care who your father is, I wouldn't want to be the seeker that cost Flint a match against Gryffindor."

Further speculation was cut off by the resumption of play. Hermione found her attention drawn along with the rest of the stadium to the drama surrounding Harry Potter. Shockingly, the Gryffindor team had decided to leave their seeker on his own, and Harry was putting on a remarkable display of evasive flying in his efforts to avoid being tagged by the rogue bludger.

Hermione wasn't sure if Harry was in more danger from the bludger or from his own flying-some of the flips and turns he was managing were frankly heart-stopping-but it didn't look like he would be able to keep clear forever. He had already had several close calls and was unable to put any distance between himself and the bludger that seemed to have developed some kind of personal enmity for the boy-who-lived.

Harry suddenly froze, staring at Draco for some reason. The pause allowed the bludger to catch up, striking him brutally on the arm. Hermione heard the snap of breaking bone from where she was sitting, but Harry didn't show any sign of giving up. Instead he changed strategy and darted straight towards Draco Malfoy, bludger in tow.

Hermione gasped, uncertain if Harry was looking to ram Draco himself or just lead the bludger into his opposition-and uncertain as to whether she wanted his gambit to work. She was shocked a second time when Draco slid out of the way of Harry's charge and the Gryffindor seeker replied with an unmistakeable snatching motion with his good hand. A gong rang out throughout the stadium, and when Hermione looked at the scoreboard she saw that it read one fifty to seventy in Gryffindor's favor.

The entire crowd was frozen in shock for a moment before the Gryffindor students broke into raucous celebration. The Slytherins seated around Hermione got over their disbelief at about the same time, cursing at the loss coming after such a dominating performance.

Hermione was looking around the stadium, taking in the whole scene, when she noticed that the rogue bludger had not stopped moving along with the rest of the quidditch equipment. Harry had alighted on the ground in front of her before passing out, and the bludger appeared determined to finish him off.

She didn't have time to think, drawing her wand as she jumped the low barrier separating the crowd from the pitch. She fired an Impediment Jinx at the bludger, silently thanking Lockhart for the practice session with the pixies as her jinx struck home. The bludger froze for a moment before exploding as whatever hex had been put on it conflicted with Hermione's attack.

She realized her hand was shaking as she lowered her wand, releasing a sigh of relief. Looking around, she blushed as she saw that the whole stadium was staring at her, although a moment later their attention shifted to a point behind her. Turning around, Hermione saw that Harry was beginning to stir.

"We did win," Harry said, sounding a little out of it, "right?"

"Harry my boy, you did quite well," Lockhart replied. The defense professor had somehow wedged his way into the protective circle the Gryffindor team had formed around their fallen seeker. "Unless I miss my guess, you could use a dose of the Bone Mending Draught."

Lockhart reached into his robes and withdrew a potions vial, handing it over with a smile. Harry gave the professor a searching, if woozy, look. After a moment, he gave a one-armed shrug and downed the potion. The crowd fell silent for a long moment, breaking into a cheer when Harry raised both his arms triumphantly.

"That really did the trick," Harry said.

"Careful there, Harry," Lockhart said. "You shouldn't put too much weight on it, and you'll still need to go see Madame Pomfrey to finish getting fixed up."

Harry nodded and followed the rest of his team, joining the rest of the Gryffindors who were already starting to celebrate on their way back to the castle. Half of the Slytherin students had already left, apparently uninterested in seeing how Harry's treatment turned out. It seemed like only a moment later that Hermione and Lockhart were the only two standing on the field.

"Lucky thing you were carrying the potion," Hermione commented.

"When you live a life like mine, there are some potions you learn to always keep on hand," Lockhart said, shaking his head. "After all, when you need the Bone Mending Draught, you often can't manage the Bone-Mending Charm."

Hermione nodded, taking his meaning. Making your name as a wizarding adventurer was as much about preparation as fancy spellwork.

ooOoo

The mood in the common room was grim when Hermione walked in. Draco was slumped over in an arm chair in a full body pout, clearly unsettled by the disdain he had incurred by costing Slytherin what had looked like an easy win against Gryffindor. His eyes lit up when he saw Hermione, and she braced herself, sensing that he was looking to shift some of the negative attention to her.

"Potter's alright then?" Draco asked, sneering at her as he pitched his voice to carry to the entire common room. "Good thing he had you there to protect him."

Hermione froze, surprised despite herself at Draco's petty behavior. She felt a sharp stab of pain as her headache flared up along with her irritation. Was it too much to ask him to act like a reasonable human being, just once? Did he really want Harry Potter to suffer serious injury over a schoolyard rivalry?

She felt her headache subside and shifted to assume a more confident posture as she realized how best to respond. Obviously appealing to Draco's sense of decency was out.

"Protecting Potter?" She asked, slightly mocking. "You mean when I cleaned up your mess? You should be thanking me for making sure that the teachers won't be able to examine that bludger."

Draco looked surprised, and Hermione noticed that she was receiving a few appraising glances from the older Slytherins. Draco took a moment to compose himself before replying.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Draco said, in his best 'young Master Malfoy' tone of voice.

"Please, Draco," Hermione said, "you should be proud. It's not easy fixing quidditch equipment like that."

Draco looked torn between proclaiming his innocence and taking credit for the rogue bludger. Hermione continued before he had a chance to reply.

"Of course, it took some of the shine off when Harry Potter caught the snitch anyway," Hermione said, smiling as sweetly as she could. "Faster broom, a fixed bludger on your side... and Potter still flew rings around you."

"Like you know anything!" Draco said, his eyes lighting up in anger. "You can barely manage to stay on a broom."

"That's right," Hermione replied, keeping her cool. "But I knew better than to buy my way into a position that I couldn't handle."

Hermione was surprised by the murmur of approval that swept through the room after that comment. Draco was too, judging by the angry flush marking his face.

"You should know your place, mudblood," Draco said, almost hissing the words in rage.

"Or else you'll write to daddy?" Hermione asked. "Too bad he can't buy you some talent to go with the fancy brooms."

Draco made as if to go for his wand, then thought better of it. She wasn't sure if it was because he remembered the results of their last duel or because the mood of the room was decidedly in her favor. Draco glanced around the room somewhat frantically, finally spitting out a final threat at Hermione before stomping his way back to his dorm.

Hermione stared after Draco's retreating form, surprised that she had been able to get one over on the boy whose family commanded so much respect within Slytherin. She was brought out of her musing when Marcus Flint, the intimidating captain of the quidditch team, stepped into her line of vision.

"Good thinking with the bludger, Granger," Flint said. "That last thing we need is a sanction heading into the next match."

"Thanks," Hermione said, blushing at the praise. "I guess next time we'll just have to make sure to get ahead by a hundred and sixty."

"If that's what we have to do," Flint said, "then that's what we'll do."

Watching the large boy grind his fist into the palm of his opposite hand, Hermione felt sorry for the next team that got matched up against Slytherin.

ooOoo

A few days later, they were working on transforming crabs into coasters in their transfiguration class. It was quite similar to the beetles-to-buttons work they had done earlier in the year, using a larger animal. Hermione had mastered it a while ago, and after earning some points for Slytherin with a successful transformation, she started working on using fewer and fewer wand movements.

About halfway through the class she succeeded in transforming the crab with a simple tap of her wand, and she settled back to relax for a bit. Next to her, Millicent was still having trouble completing the spell successfully; her coaster was perfect, except for the fact that it had claws. Hermione watched Millicent try the spell a few times before offering her advice.

"Milly, show me the wand motion you're using. Slowly," Hermione instructed. Millicent complied, and Hermione stopped her halfway through. "Right there, you need to use a circling motion instead of just a jab. The spell needs to affect a larger area than the last one."

Millicent followed Hermione's directions, and on her second try she managed to produce a proper coaster. After thanking Hermione for advice, she sat back with a satisfied sigh and the two lapsed into a companionable silence.

"We work pretty well together in class, you know," Hermione commented after a moment.

The other girl didn't reply other than to nod. Hermione watched her face carefully, trying to figure out what she was thinking. She couldn't read anything other than caution in Milly's expression.

"You could come sit with Blaise and Daphne and me at dinner," Hermione continued. "I think you'd like it."

"I can't do that," Millicent replied with finality.

Hermione couldn't help huffing in frustration. She thought Slytherin was supposed to be the house that valued achievement above everything else, but sometimes it seemed like the house of nepotism.

"Because of Pansy," Hermione said, pitching her voice not to carry beyond their table. "Because your mothers were friends, and their mothers before that."

Milly didn't say anything, but the look she gave Hermione was a clear confirmation of her statement. Pansy hadn't tried to harm Hermione directly at all this year, but it was frustrating to be prevented from developing what she thought could be a strong friendship because of the social tie between the other girls.

"These things have to start somewhere," Hermione said, in a final effort at persuasion. "There's no reason our kids and grandkids couldn't be friends."

"Not with things the way they are," Millicent said, giving a resigned shrug. "If things were different, it would be different."

There was nothing Hermione could say to that.

ooOoo

Hermione spent the next Saturday working on her own transfiguration project. She was comfortable with all of the inanimate to inanimate and animate to inanimate transfiguration that was likely to be required for the OWL examinations, and she wanted to move on to the next step: inanimate to animate transfiguration.

It was tough. She had spent the better part of a day working on the simple teacup to hamster transfiguration, and even frequent consultation with Tom wasn't enough to get her over the hump. It was well after lunch time when Tom made a different suggestion.

"_I'm not sure I can help you learn this,_" Tom wrote, "_but I know someone who can._"

"What do you mean?" Hermione wrote back.

"Let me show you."

With that, the pages of the book began to flip on their own, ending on a page that covered the month of September. One of the dates began to glow before shifting to display what looked for all the world like a tiny television screen. Hermione raised the book to press her eye against the little window, and before she knew what was happening, she was tilting forward; the window was widening, she felt her body leave its seat and she was pitched headfirst through the opening in the page, into a whirl of color and shadow.

She felt her feet hit the ground and found herself standing in the familiar confines of the transfiguration classroom. Professor McGonagall was nowhere to be seen, however, and Albus Dumbledore was standing at the front of the room. Hermione took in the auburn color of his beard in the brief moment before she began stammering out an excuse.

"Headmaster, I..." She trailed off as she realized that nobody in the room was reacting to her presence. Neither the collection of unfamiliar students nor the surprisingly young figure of her headmaster had given the slightest indication of being aware of her sudden appearance.

"Today will be our first attempt at transforming an inanimate object into a living creature," Dumbledore announced to the class, before turning to write on the board. "Before you begin, there are a few things to keep in mind..."

Hermione watched, fascinated, as Dumbledore continued with his lecture. This must be Tom's memory of his own school days-now that Hermione had a moment to think, she remembered that Dumbledore had been the transfiguration instructor before being promoted to the office of headmaster-a memory that he was somehow able to display to her from the inside. It was a remarkable piece of magic, and Hermione examined the room around her with curiosity while keeping most of her attention on Dumbledore's lecture.

The classroom itself didn't look any different than it did in her day. She didn't know any of the students, of course, although some of them did look vaguely familiar. It was strange to think that she could be seeing her classmates' parents or grandparents during their school days, but the most jarring change was in Dumbledore.

His hair and beard still retained their original color, but that was only the most superficial of the changes from the headmaster she knew. The younger Dumbledore already had the air of unshakeable confidence that he retained as an old man, but it was coupled with an intense competence that was in sharp contrast with the affable eccentricity that the older Dumbledore wore like a cloak. Watching Dumbledore pace back and forth in front of the classroom, Hermione could practically feel the magic rolling off of him, even separated by fifty years. It was the difference between seeing a legendary figure riding out the end of the his career and seeing a man on the verge of creating his own legend.

Dumbledore was also a remarkably good instructor. Professor McGonagall was Hermione's favorite teacher at Hogwarts, but she had learned very little in her classes that she didn't already know. In fifteen minutes, Dumbledore had already given her two or three new ideas to try out, laid out in such a way that they seemed obvious once he had finished explaining. To be fair, Dumbledore was delivering a lecture on more advanced material, but Hermione had a feeling that McGonagall would be hard pressed to match his performance.

She was a little sad when the lecture finished, then surprised that the memory continued. Hermione realized what was going on as Dumbledore began walking around the classroom: she was getting a chance to see him deliver hands on instruction to each student. His first stop was in front of a handsome black-haired boy who already had a hamster running around in front of him.

"Well done, Mr. Riddle," Dumbledore said. There was a pause, as Dumbledore seemed to briefly contemplate awarding house points before turning to move on without another word.

Hermione peered more closely at the image of the boy who would grow up to create such a remarkable diary. He was neatly turned out in his Hogwarts uniform, his Slytherin tie tucked away exactly as school regulations demanded. A brief frown of disappointment marred his features, but was quickly smoothed away in what Hermione could tell was a mask of neutrality. The closer examination also confirmed her initial impression-Tom was rather good looking, comparing favorably with most of the boys in her year.

She was drawn out of her examination when she heard Dumbledore award two points to another student. Looking over, she saw another hamster running around on top of a desk, although it had the misfortune to have a teacup handle protruding from its back.

"But that's not fair," Hermione said, "Tom's was much better. Why would Dumbledore..."

"He never did like me," the voice came from the boy she was standing next to, and Hermione whirled around in surprise to see Tom Riddle looking straight at her.

"You can see me?" Hermione asked, surprised.

"Of course," Tom replied. "Everybody else is just a reproduction, but I'm the same person that's been writing back to you. Unfortunately I can't talk and show you the memory at the same time."

Hermione looked around, seeing that the scene had frozen around the two of them, and then turned back to Tom.

"Dumbledore should have given you the points," Hermione said. She had never known Dumbledore to show open favoritism.

"He is head of Gryffindor," Tom replied, shrugging. "It's not surprising he'd shortchange a Slytherin student."

From Tom's attitude, Hermione got the impression that this was hardly an isolated occurrence. Something about his comment just didn't ring true, though.

"He just gave points to another Slytherin," Hermione said, shaking her head. "I don't understand-it's like he had it out for you personally."

"Well, some students are from families that he was a little more predisposed to like," Tom said, his voice carefully neutral.

"You're saying Dumbledore discriminated against people based on who their parents were?" Hermione asked, shocked.

"No, not like you're saying." Tom said, holding his hands up in denial. "They say his father was arrested for attacking some muggles, but Dumbledore was no bigot. He rescued me!"

"Rescued you?" Hermione echoed, confused.

"My mother was a witch, but she died when I was born," Tom said. "My father was a muggle, and he didn't want anything to do with me."

Hermione made a sympathetic noise and tried to think of something to say, but Tom waved her off.

"It's ok, I got over it a long time ago. Growing up in the orphanage was rough, though," Tom said. "I liked the company of books more than my peers and sometimes strange things happened around me... and, well, kids can be cruel to those who are different. Dumbledore delivered my Hogwarts letter and helped me join the wizarding world where I belonged."

"Still, just because he helped you then doesn't mean he should be able to mistreat you now," Hermione said.

Tom shook his head but didn't say anything. Hermione looked on, confused, as Tom seemed to gather his thoughts. He glanced around the memory of the transfiguration as if searching for some kind of inspiration.

"Look, it's like this: take the Carrows. They've been known for producing brilliant wizards for ages," Tom said. "So you'd expect the next one to come to Hogwarts to be smart, and if he gets himself hurt trying to do advanced magic, it's just a sign of intellectual curiosity. In somebody else, maybe it's a sign that they're unstable and power hungry."

Hermione just looked at Tom evenly, sensing that there was more to the story.

"I didn't know it until a few years after this class, but my mother's father and brother were both completely cracked," Tom said, sighing. "I can't blame Dumbledore for worrying about whether I was going to go off my rocker too."

"What?" Hermione asked, outraged. "That's horrible! You can't blame a child for the crimes of his ancestors, that's wrong."

"You don't understand," Tom shot back, raising his voice. "I couldn't expect to just waltz into Hogwarts and be treated like a Potter or a Longbottom."

"I can't believe this," Hermione said, "you're defending him! Can't you see how wrong this is?"

"Dumbledore saved me!" Tom was yelling now. "I won't have you stand here and insult him!"

There was a flash of light, a whirling of color, and Hermione felt herself falling. She landed with a crash on the floor of the classroom she had commandeered for her training session. She sat up, rubbing the back of her head, and found her attention drawn to the diary as it snapped shut on its own. If it weren't an inanimate object, she would have sworn it was staring at her reproachfully.

She thought about writing something in the diary, but decided against it. Tom had seemed pretty upset. A rumble from her stomach reminded her that it was about time for dinner, and she decided to let him cool off while she ate.

Hermione packed up her things, making sure to tuck the diary away in its pocket inside her robe. Even with the change in cover, she didn't want to give Malfoy any extra chances to spot it. She made her way down to the Great Hall, but had to stop on the second floor stairwell when her way was blocked by a great mass of people. She tried to work her way forward, but the people in the crowd seemed unwilling to move. Everybody was remaining oddly silent, until Draco's voice rang out above the crowd.

"Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

Hermione craned her neck, trying to see what on earth was going on. She wasn't successful until the crowd parted, allowing a small group through. Dumbledore was in the lead, something cradled in his arms that Hermione couldn't quite make out. Professors McGonagall, Lockhart, and Snape were trailing behind him, looking quite serious. Behind them were Harry, Ron, and Neville, walking with their shoulders slumped. The whole group made their way up a set of stairs and out of sight.

The crowd dispersed soon after, and Hermione was able to work her way forward and see what everybody had been looking at. Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

She stared at the wall, trying to make sense of the message, until she felt a tap on her shoulder. Looking over with a start, she saw Blaise looking at her with concern.

"All right there, Hermione?" Blaise asked.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked.

"Nothing good," Blaise replied, as the two of them fell into step on the way to the Great Hall.

The two of them sat down to eat dinner, and Blaise filled her in on what he knew. Apparently the three Gryffindor boys had been caught standing over the petrified body of Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat. It looked suspicious, but Blaise figured it was unlikely to be their doing-apparently the chamber of secrets was associated with the heir of Slytherin, and none of the Gryffindors was a likely candidate.

The story behind the chamber of secrets was chilling. Apparently it was related to the more well known tale of the falling out between Salazar Slytherin and the other founders of Hogwarts. According to the stories Blaise had heard, Slytherin had left some kind of deadly creature hidden in a secret chamber he had created when Hogwarts was built, to be unleashed by his heir to secure his revenge.

Considering that Slytherin had gone unavenged for nearly a thousand years, most wizards considered the chamber to be nothing more than a fairy tale. Now the fairy tale was coming to life-or being exploited by somebody as a cover for their own nefarious deeds.

Hermione found the story disturbing, but was even more disturbed by the scene that was waiting for her in the Slytherin common room. While most of the house was rather subdued, Draco looked like Christmas had come early. He was holding court with Crabbe, Goyle, and Pansy, repeatedly exclaiming about how the Heir would "cleanse" the school. Hermione tried to focus on her reading, but after about ten minutes she couldn't take any more and stood up.

"You're pretty brave, once somebody else is doing your dirty work!" Hermione said, pointing an accusing finger at Malfoy, before she turned and stomped back to her dormitory.

She was surprised to find herself having to work to hold back tears. She knew she and Draco would never be friends, but it still hurt to have a fellow student actually cheering for her death.

Before she went to sleep, Hermione pulled out the diary to ask a question that had been bothering her.

"Tom, you were raised by muggles and sorted into Slytherin. How did you manage it?"

The ink disappeared, but no reply was immediately forthcoming. Hermione stared at the diary for a long minute, wondering if Tom had abandoned her, before his reply slowly swirled onto the page.

"_With great difficulty._"

ooOoo

Hermione was looking forward to getting away from talk of the Heir when she and Blaise met with Neville for their usual study session, but she was disappointed when Harry and Ron joined them once more. The two boys seemed convinced that Draco Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin.

"I really don't think-" Hermione began, before being interrupted.

"You didn't see him when he saw the message," Ron said, jabbing a finger in emphasis. "He looked like-"

"Yes, we know," Blaise cut in. "If you were asking me who is most likely to start up a fan club for the Heir, I'd say Malfoy is your man. But no way is he the Heir."

"Why not?" Harry asked, putting a restraining hand on Ron's shoulder. "He has the breeding for it, doesn't he?"

"First of all, don't you think the real Heir would be keeping a lower profile?" Blaise asked in reply. He waited for Harry to nod before continuing. "And secondly, as much of a ponce as Malfoy is, have you ever seen him do anything really threatening?"

"He took my rememberall," Neville said, surprisingly heated.

"Sure, but that's not really dark lord material, is it?" Blaise asked.

"It starts with the little things," Ron said. "I think-"

"Enough!" Hermione shouted, clenching her fists in frustration. "Some of us are here to study. If you'd rather gossip about Draco, go do it somewhere else!"

As Ron, Harry, and Blaise filed out of the room, Hermione consoled herself with the thought that at least Neville still cared about studying. She wanted to just focus on schoolwork until all of this nonsense about the Heir of Slytherin faded away.

A week later, Hermione unbent enough to break her routine to attend the dueling club along with Blaise and Daphne. Looking around the Great Hall, she couldn't help but wonder how many of them were only attending because of Slytherin's monster. Still, at least they were channeling their fear into learning, instead of a bunch of useless talk.

The Great Hall had been transformed for the occasion. The long dining tables had vanished, and one whole section of the Hall was hidden by a set of stage curtains. A simple wooden podium stood alone, located near the spot where the curtains met. The students-it seemed like the better part of the school was in attendance-fell silent as Gilderoy Lockhart walked into view from behind the curtain and took his position behind the podium.

He flashed the students a brilliant smile. Hermione considered herself a practical young witch; she was far more impressed by Lockhart's Order of Merlin than his awards for Most Charming Smile. Still, she could see why Witch Weekly had been unable to find anybody to top Lockhart for the last five years.

"Thank you all for coming!" Lockhart called out. "We're going to begin with a brief demonstration. Now, it will be a while before any of you can perform the magic you're about to see, but if you stick with it, the sky's the limit! With no further ado, it gives me great pleasure to introduce..."

Lockhart tapped the podium, and one of the curtains was swept back to reveal Professor Snape, regarding the crowd with his usual scowl.

"Your very own potions master, the youngest Head of House in nearly a century, regarded by many as the most talented duelist of his generation... Severus Snape!" Lockhart announced, then paused. Hermione joined the rest of her house in clapping, but she couldn't help but notice the other ones. Once the applause died down, Lockhart tapped the podium once more.

"And facing him will be none other than the a five time champion of the professional dueling circuit, the man known as the fastest wand in Britain, Filius Flitwick!" Lockhart said, obviously enjoying the moment. As the curtain pulled back to reveal the beloved professor, the crowd burst out in a cacphony of cheers. Flitwick was so excited he practically appeared to be vibrating as he took a bow.

Lockhart tapped his wand once more on the podium, and a translucent curtain shimmered into existence between the stage and the students. Snape responded by pivoting to face his opponent, while the transformation that came over Flitwick was striking. The aura of carefree cheer that usually surrounded the Charms master seemed to drain away, and his face took on an unusually serious cast. By the time he turned to face Snape, there was no doubt that the audience was in for a show.

The students around Hermione broke into excited chattering. She could hear snippets of debate about who was going to win the upcoming duel, mixed in with not a few wagers being made on the outcome. A hush fell over the crowd as Lockhart waved his arm.

"This duel will be conducted under professional dueling rules, which means no permanent maiming is allowed. The Unforgiveables are, of course, unforgiveable. Not that we have to worry about that kind of thing between colleagues," Lockhart said, chuckling. He turned to face the stage, and his laughter grew rather strained when he saw the tense staredown taking place between the other two professors. "In any event, the wards on the stage will prevent stray spells from harming the audience, so everybody please just relax and enjoy the show. Combatants will begin at my signal."

Flitwick and Snape gave each other short, perfunctory bows. Neither one took his eyes off the other at any point in the motion. Lockhart seemed to realize that this was all of the ceremony that was going to occur, and with another tap of his wand on the podium a gong rang out over the hall.

Flitwick immediately snapped out a spell that Snape batted aside before sending a hex of his own back at his opponent. Flitwick sidestepped, allowing the spell to discharge itself and leave a small burn mark on the stage. The two men continued to stare each other down for a long moment. Hermione felt a chill run down her back in anticipation.

They moved almost simultaneously, as though responding to an unseen signal. Flitwick sent a stream of spells pouring out towards Snape, a veritable flood of magic that left dancing afterimages in Hermione's vision. Snape batted aside each and every one of the incoming spells, occasionally sending back an attack of his own. Flitwick didn't bother with any defensive magic, easily avoiding the incoming spells while refusing to relent in his own spellcasting.

"Marvellous!" Lockhart exclaimed. "You can see how Professor Flitwick earned his nickname... and Professor Snape is keeping up with him beat for beat."

It was clear that Snape was having some trouble. His return shots were coming fewer and farther between, and it he was starting to scramble a bit to deflect the spells that Flitwick was sending his way. Finally Snape resorted to a broad area shield spell. It reflected the two charms that had been headed his way, but the next spell detonated when it hit the shield, creating an incredibly bright flash.

Hermione blinked and when her vision cleared, Snape appeared to be alone on the platform.

"Never forget that deception and misdirection can be as powerful as any spell," Lockhart commented. "This disappearing act looks like the move that ended the Hustle in Brussels, Flitwick's second title defense and third defeat of Johann 'Gentleman Johnny' Schmidt."

Snape had remained motionless, casting his eyes back and forth across the stage as if he could reveal an invisible presence just by glaring at it. Hermione couldn't believe he was so calm. Flitwick had demonstrated that he could cast an astounding volume of spells, and now that he had hidden himself there was no telling where the next attack could come from.

The tension in the hall reached a fever pitch as the students all seemed to be holding their breath, not willing to blink in case they should miss the deciding moment of the duel. Hermione was almost to the point of chewing on her fingernails when Snape finally moved, sweeping his wand forward and unleashing an angry red slash of magic.

There was a clanging noise as Flitwick faded into view, holding up a shield that had dispersed the attack. Professor Snape wasted no time casting the same spell again and again. Flitwick could do little more than maintain his defenses, but was forced back step by step as each spell hit with the force of a sledgehammer.

"Remarkable! Flitwick has been forced on the defensive!" Lockhart exclaimed, caught up in the moment. "Certainly an unfamiliar sight on the dueling circuit."

The diminutive professor had been forced back nearly to the edge of the stage before he was able to muster an effective response. The seventh attack that Snape sent at him was not merely absorbed by his defenses, but reflected back at his opponent. Snape dismissed it with a wave of his wand, but the momentum had shifted and Flitwick went back on the attack.

This time, along with the almost solid stream of offensive hexes, Flitwick dashed around his opponent, constantly changing his angle of attacks. Snape fended every spell off until one apparently miscast charm rebounded off of the stage wards, striking the potions master in the back of the legs. He immediately collapsed, victim of a Jelly-Legs jinx.

Snape removed the jinx almost immediately, but the damage was done. In his moment of vulnerability Flitwick had redoubled his efforts, and in the blink of an eye Snape was trussed up in a set of conjured ropes, his wand arcing through the air to land in Flitwick's outstretched hand.

The crowd broke into a thunderous round of applause. Professor Flitwick smiled and bowed, then grimaced and cracked his back as he straightened up.

"I'm getting too old for this kind of thing," Flitwick said, before freeing Snape with a wave of his wand and returning his opponent's wand. "Good show, Severus."

Snape stared at the smaller professor with an unreadable expression for a moment before giving him a grudging nod. There was no shame in losing to the best, after all.

"Well done, well done!" Lockhart said, applauding as enthusastically as any of the students. "Although I daresay it may have been a little intimidating. Perhaps we should have a couple of students up here to give a demonstration of a more attainable level of skill."

"An excellent idea," Snape replied. He could hardly be pleased at the prospect of ending the demonstration with a loss for Slytherin. "I believe Draco Malfoy and-"

"If I may, sir," Draco interrupted. Hermione was surprised he had managed to so quickly work his way to the front, and even more surprised when Snape gestured for him to continue speaking. "I reckon Granger and I could put on a show."

Snape's eyes swept the crowd, quickly pinning Hermione in place. He studied her for a minute with no visible expression on his face. She stared back defiantly, unwilling to back down. Dueling each other in public might not be the greatest show of Slytherin unity, but the way she figured it that was Draco's fault for making the suggestion. Finally Snape nodded, reluctantly.

Hermione accepted a pat on the shoulder and wish for good luck from Blaise, then made her way to the stage. By the time she reached it Draco had taken his place at one end of the dueling arena, so she made her way to stand opposite from him. It was strange how the gleaming arena and the presence of the crowd gave the whole situation a feeling of momentous weight.

"Very well, let's see what your young Slytherins can do," Lockhart said. He raised the wards around the stage once more and turned to address Hermione and Draco. "Remember, professional dueling rules. No deliberate maiming."

Lockhart's tone was light, as he clearly expected nothing more than an exchange of schoolyard jinxes. Staring into Draco's focused expression, Hermione wasn't so sure.

"You all right there, Granger?" Draco taunted. "You've been looking a little under the weather ever since the Chamber opened. I'd hate to think that you're not fighting at full strength."

Hermione ground her teeth and bit back her initial response. She had been having trouble sleeping since that night, and her headaches were getting worse. Just being around Draco was enough to send a spike of irritation through her, triggering a throbbing pain behind her temples.

"I'm fine," Hermione ground out. "Nothing could make me feel better than humiliating you in front of the entire school."

"We'll see about that," Draco said. He decided against calling her a mudblood in such a public setting, but it was plain from the sneer on his face what he was thinking.

There was no time to respond as the gong rang through the hall, signaling the start of the duel. Just like the last time they fought, Hermione raised a shield around her arm and used it to deflect Draco's first couple of hexes. None of them reflected straight back at Draco, unfortunately, as the boy was putting the finishing touches on a complicated series of wand motions that Hermione had never seen before. She sent a tickling jinx at Malfoy, but he was able to sidestep it without interrupting his wand movement.

"Serpensortia!" Draco announced, swinging his wand down from overhead. Time seemed to slow down as the tip of his wand exploded, conjuring a long black snake and propelling it towards Hermione. She could almost make out the individual scales as the snake arced into the air and her mind raced through possible responses. The snake would be able to attack around her shield, and it would be impossible for her to fight off the snake and Malfoy at the same time. Almost without conscious thought Hermione snapped her own wand forward, dropping her concentration on her shield and firing off a Cutting Charm.

The charm neatly bisected the snake and continued on to hit Malfoy just below his ribs, slicing a hole in his robe and leaving a trickle of blood running down his side. He immediately hissed in pain and brought his hand down to his side. Riding a wave of fury at Draco's escalation of the duel, Hermione stepped forward to take advantage of the opening by sending a Bludgeoning Hex at his knee. It wouldn't do any damage that Madame Pomfrey couldn't fix, but a little pain might go a long way in persuading Draco to leave her alone in the future.

Just before the bludgeoner connected there was a flash of light, and it was deflected into the ground. When Hermione looked back up she saw that Professor Snape had taken a position between her and Draco.

"Five points from Slytherin for excessive use of force," Snape announced. Hermione was shocked. Snape never took points from his own house unless their behavior was truly out of line. She couldn't believe that he would do so just for somebody trying to hurt their opponent in a duel. For a moment Hermione felt an insane urge to attack Snape for treating her that way, but the memory of the duel he had just fought with Flitwick quickly convinced her to lower her wand and limit herself to a verbal response.

"Excessive? What was that, a bloody garter snake?" Hermione asked, gesturing at the corpse of the snake.

"Add a detention for cheek," Snape replied, unmoved. Hermione felt her hold on her temper slipping one more as she glared at the blond head of hair that was just barely visible behind her head of house.

"That's a good look for you, Malfoy, hiding behind somebody else's robes," Hermione hissed. "I'm surprised we ever see you anywhere else."

Hermione spun on her heel and marched off the stage, barely able to hear Snape assignign her another week of detentions over the blood pounding in her ears. She was given a wide berth as she reached the audience, and she found herself alone as the students were paired up to practice disarming charms. That suited her just fine, as she was occupied in brooding over the favorable treatment that followed Draco around like a birthright.

"You want to partner up, Hermione?" She looked up in surprise to see the familiar glasses and gren eyes of Harry Potter.

"What? Why?" She asked, surprised.

"It didn't seem right to leave somebody off by herself," Harry said, smiling at her, "and who better to help me with my casting than the top student in our year?"

"Flatterer," Hermione said, snorting softly, but smiling despite herself. "I know you don't need any work on your disarming charm. Why are you really here?"

"Well," Harry said, looking a little uncomfortable. "Ron's getting a little paranoid, so I just wanted to make sure that you're not the Heir of Slytherin."

"What? That's ridiculous," Hermione said.

"You know we thought Malfoy might be the Heir," Harry replied, "and when you took him apart like that Ron figured you might be the real Heir. From what I was hearing, he's not the only one."

"Harry," Hermione said, exasperated, "I'm the heir to a dental practice."

"I know, I know," Harry said, holding his hands up in surrender. "But that was pretty vicious, just now."

"I know," Hermione said, then sighed. As the anger drained out of her she was left feeling tired and drained. "But Malfoy... you know that every day he's going on about how the Heir is going to 'clean out the school' by killing all the muggleborn students? He just makes me so mad."

"He's a prat," Harry said. "I'm glad I don't have to share a House with him."

They fell silent as they each contemplated their own loathing of Draco Malfoy. After a moment they exchanged a glance and joined the rest of their classmates in spell practice.

ooOoo

The next afternoon found Hermione and Pansy alone together in the girls' dormitory. This was not such an unusual occurrence: Hermione had taken to avoiding the common room whenever the Heir was the topic of conversation, which was most of the time these days. Pansy had just ducked into the room to get her textbooks, and was headed out when Hermione locked the door with a muttered "Colloportus."

"We need to talk, Pansy," Hermione said.

A little thrill ran through her when she saw the frightened expression on Pansy's face as the other girl turned to face her. She immediately felt a stab of guilt, but firmly supressed the feeling-she and Tom had carefully planned out this little meeting, and she had to stick to the script. It was a shame that things had come to this, but some people only responded to force.

Pansy was waiting for her to explain what she wanted, but Hermione instead turned to the small writing desk under the window by her bed. Waving her wand over the simple wooden chair that accompanied the desk, she transfigured it into a small but plush armchair. The spell stretched the limits of her skill, and it wouldn't last more than half an hour, but Hermione was sure that there were no other second years-and unlikely to be any third years-who could manage the spell.

Pansy's eyes widened at the display of magical proficiency. When another wave of Hermione's wand and murmured incantation sent the chair scuttling across the floor at her, she obeyed the implicit command and took a seat. Hermione remained standing, looking down at the girl who had tormented her for so much of her first year at Hogwarts.

"You had a choice, last year. You could have helped out the little lost muggleborn who was sorted into Slytherin, shown her the ropes in the wizarding world... or you could make her life miserable to try to score points with your pureblood friends," Hermione said, taking a few steps toward the other girl. "You chose poorly."

"I'm sorry, ok?" Pansy said, her eyes darting around the room as if looking for an escape route. "I haven't done anything to you this year!"

"Not directly, no." Hermione said. "But Tracey and Milly are still avoiding me like the plague."

Watching Pansy squirm, Hermione felt a smidgeon of disgust at her own behavior. She had been the victim of bullying enough times to not want to inflict that same kind of pain on others. But Tom was right that somebody like Pansy was never going to respond to sweet reason alone, and somebody like Milly would never break free of Pansy without a little help.

"Well..." Pansy said, sputtering slightly. "They're my friends."

"They do what you tell them to," Hermione observed. "What if you told them they were free to pick their own friends?"

"I can't do that!" Pansy said. She looked panicked, now. "What would I tell Draco?"

"I'm sure you can think of something," Hermione said. She tugged on her chin with her off hand as if in deep thought. "I know! You could tell him that you're more afraid of me than you are of him."

As frightened as Pansy was, that comment roused what was left of her pride. She started to reach for her wand only to freeze as Hermione raised an eyebrow, clearly prepared to deal with any spell Pansy was capable of. Hermione twirled her wand idly around her fingers as she took another step forward.

"Do you need me to help make that story more convincing?" Hermione asked.

"No!" Pansy was pressed all the way back in her chair. "No. I'll talk to Milly and Tracey. I'll figure out some way to keep Draco happy. Please..."

Hermione lowered her wand and smiled. She was glad for the concession, even if it twisted her up a little inside to see Pansy heave a visible sigh of relief.

"Good," Hermione said, before cancelling the charm on the door. "I'm glad we had this talk."

Pansy scurried out of the room without another word, and Hermione sighed. She thought of herself as a nice girl. She came to Hogwarts just wanting to learn and make friends. But Tom was right: living in a house with people who would cheer for her death, she couldn't afford to be nice all the time.

ooOoo


	6. Chapter 6

AN: As always, I appreciate all of the reviews.

ooOoo

Severus Snape glanced up from his notes and suppressed a sigh with the ease of long practice. His latest Slytherin problem child was still scrubbing away with the same energy that she had started out with, every brush stroke somehow conveying a sense of indignance at an unjust punishment. Most students would have started flagging after the first hour.

Not that Snape really needed any help browbeating a thirteen year old girl, but it was just common sense to try to establish a favorable environment before starting a battle.

Draco Malfoy apparently suffered from a significant deficiency of common sense. Snape had heard about the thrashing Malfoy had suffered at the end of the last school year. It was hard to separate out fact from fiction in the Slytherin rumor mill, but every account of the duel had agreed that it was completely one sided.

When Draco sought out a rematch Snape had assumed that the boy had good reason to believe he had surpassed Hermione Granger, and Snape was happy to showcase two of his most talented students. Even discounting for the inevitable exaggeration-the idea of a first year student mastering the standard duelist's application of the shield charm was simply preposterous-if the rumors from the previous year were at all accurate, the two of them should be able to put on a duel that would be well beyond the capabilities of the other second year students.

Draco's spellcasting had been competent. He'd deployed a decent collection of jinxes, and conjuring animals was third year material. Draco hadn't cast the spell as quickly as Snape would have liked, but calling forth a snake that would be useful in combat was quite a feat for a wizard his age.

And yet Granger had taken him apart with contemptuous ease. Snape was past being surprised at the girl's spellcasting abilities, but he was concerned about what seemed to be a newly developing vicious streak.

He couldn't help but wonder if he was somehow responsible for this development. It was hard to believe that a single pep talk could have tranformed the crying wreck of a girl who had been in his office a year ago into the duelist that had cooly prepared to mangle Draco Malfoy's leg, but it was hard to think of any other explanation.

The last time he had been forced to take an interest in Hermione Granger, he had been well outside of his comfort zone. Severus Snape usually made young girls cry; he wasn't somebody they turned to for support. This time, though, they were operating squarely within his area of expertise. A depressingly high proportion of his interaction with Slytherin students in his capacity as head of house involved reining in bullies who had stepped over the line.

"Tell me, Miss Granger," Snape began, pausing as her head snapped up and her body froze, all of her attention focused entirely on him. Snape found the mannerism vaguely familiar and vaguely unsettling. He filed the thought away for later consideration before continuing. "Do you understand why you are here?"

"Excessive use of force," Hermione said, her voice expressionless. "And cheek."

This time Snape did not suppress his long-suffering sigh. "Miss Granger, you spend quite enough time in class parroting other people's words. I am asking if you can explain why your actions have led to this detention."

"Because Draco Malfoy can dish out whatever he wants," Hermione snapped, eyes flashing, "but heaven forbid anybody ever hit back."

"You think this is a result of simple favoritism?" Snape asked. He kept his voice mild, but allowed a hint of a warning tone to creep in. Hermione pressed forward regardless.

"Well, isn't that how he got on the Quidditch team?" Hermione said. "And he has seemed awfully well prepared in Potions class this year."

Snape had to exert himself a bit to control his instinctive reaction. Feeding answers to Draco Malfoy was hardly his proudest moment as a potions instructor, but there was no other way to let the boy show Granger up in class. Distasteful as it was, it still wouldn't stand out on the list of compromising things he had done on Lucius Malfoy's behalf over the years.

The game had come to an end soon enough, anyway, when Granger managed to study ahead to the point that he would have had to look beyond OWL-level material to stump the girl. At some point even Snape had to justify the difficulty of his in-class questioning, as he had had to explain to a disappointed Draco Malfoy. Looking at the girl before him now, Snape idly wondered if all of the extra studying had caused her to lose her hold on her temper.

"If it was all about protecting Draco, perhaps you can explain why I stood by and let you slice him open with a cutting charm?" Snape asked.

"It happened too fast," Hermione said. "You-"

"Don't flatter yourself, Miss Granger," Snape interrupted. "I intervened precisely when I meant to, neither early nor late. I am a wizard, after all."

She eyed him suspiciously, and Snape allowed a ghost of a smile to play across his features. Many of the muggleborn students somehow got it into their heads that their elders were ignorant of muggle culture, and he took some joy in dispelling those false notions as he did in dispelling their belief in their adequacy in front of a cauldron.

"But that doesn't make sense," Hermione said, focusing back on the matter at hand. "Draco summoned a poisonous snake, and that was fine. Casting a cutting charm at Draco was fine. But a bludgeoner is grounds for losing points?"

"Consider the context, not the spell," Snape said, leaning forward to make sure he had her full attention. "Once the cutting curse hit Mr. Malfoy, he was at your mercy. A simple disarming charm would have ended the duel. Instead, you decided to break his knee. Why?"

"Madame Pomfrey could have fixed it," Hermione protested, but Snape could see that her resolve was weakening.

"Madame Pomfrey can fix many things," Snape replied. "That doesn't mean that students have a license to hex each other, and it doesn't answer my question. Why did you decide to inflict that kind of damage on a helpless opponent?"

"He just makes me so mad," Hermione said, looking down at the table.

It sounded like she was telling the truth, which was something of a relief. A student who made a calculated choice to do that kind of thing would be a real nightmare to control. It looked like Snape might be able to appeal to Granger's conscience, not just her fear of him. Of course, there was no reason he couldn't do both.

"You are growing in to a competent witch, Miss Granger. Power will always be at your fingertips," Snape said. "How you use that power-even when you are angry-will define the person you become. Keep that in mind before you act in the future."

Hermione nodded, not looking up from the table. Snape thought he might have seen tears shining in her eyes, but he had long since moved past the point of feeling guilty when he made little girls cry.

"And as long as you are in this castle, your actions will reflect upon me as your head of house," Snape said, letting a more overtly threatening note creep into his voice. "Keep that in mind, also."

Hermione nodded, and Snape dismissed her from the detention. She bolted out of the room, no doubt running to go cry into a pillow or write in her diary or whatever it was she did when she was upset.

Snape sat back and poured a carefully measured draught of firewhiskey from the bottle he kept on hand for emergencies (and for grading first year essays). It was just his luck that Draco Malfoy had entered the school along with the most talented muggleborn witch he had seen since... well, for a long time, anyways. He could only hope that after this latest humiliation Draco had learned to stop tickling that particular sleeping dragon.

ooOoo

Hermione was still in a bit of a funk a week later when she was finally able to free up enough time for another lesson from Tom. She was a nice girl! She'd never been in trouble in her life until she was sorted into Slytherin. Although... since starting at Hogwarts, she had been getting into trouble with distressing regularity. Could it be that she had always been a troublemaker limited only by her inability to threaten anybody physically, a limitation that was removed once she had her wand?

No, Hermione decided, that just wasn't true. Draco was the one who wanted muggleborn students kicked out-purged, he had said in public that he wanted them purged from the school-she was just defending herself. It wasn't her fault that Draco kept provoking her. She would just have to be more discreet about how she pushed back in the future, apparently.

She forced her worries away and focused on the lecture Tom had pulled up. Professor Merrythought was demonstrating the stunning spell. It looked like it would be dead useful, but Hermione found the lecture less than illuminating.

"So you can't even tell if you did it right unless it hits somebody?" Hermione asked, frustrated. The scene froze around her as Tom freed himself from the memory to reply.

"I'm afraid so," he said. "You'll have to convince one of your friends to be a target dummy for this one."

"Neville's always a good sport," Hermione said. "I really want to learn this spell. The duelling club will be so impressed if I can get it."

In the second meeting of the duelling club, Lockhart had noticed that Harry and Hermione were engaging in a relatively amicable exchange of spells that were well beyond most of their classmates, and had promptly pulled the two of them up for a demonstration. Hermione had held her own, but Harry was a real nightmare to duel. He could conjure a shield charm strong enough to deflect just about anything she sent his way, and his offensive spells were always on target thanks to his freakishly good hand-eye coordination.

She wanted to learn the stunning spell for its own sake, but also because it was notorious for putting a severe strain on the shield spell. Compared to the jinxes that made up most of her offensive repertoire, it was like tossing a rock at a window instead of a pebble.

"It will impress them," Tom said, before fixing her with a serious look. "But you should be careful."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked.

"Some wizards believe that proficiency with the stunning spell indicates a talent for the Dark Arts," Tom replied.

"That's ridiculous," Hermione said, "how could knocking somebody out be related to the Dark Arts?"

"All of the spells that you have been learning use magic to create some kind of physical effect," Tom said. "A properly cast stunning spell forces your will on somebody else, pushing them into unconsciousness. The reason you need to test on other people is to see whether you are able to impose your will with the spell."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Hermione asked.

"Many of the spells that are considered Dark Arts have that same component of imposing your will on somebody else," Tom explained, then shrugged. "Not for anything so benign as unconsciousness, but the mechanics are similar."

"Do you think..." Hermione said, then stopped. She remembered how Professor Snape had chewed her out when she lashed out at Draco, and she remembered how angry she had been when she did it. "If I'm good at a spell like that, does that make me a bad person?"

"Of course not," Tom said, walking over to face Hermione. He placed a hand on either shoulder as he looked into her eyes. As a memory he couldn't touch her in the same way that a person could, but his presence was comforting. "You remind me of me when I was a student."

Hermione blushed, but couldn't think of anything to say. Tom released her after a moment before he continued.

"Because you're talented, other people will try to tear you down. I just wanted to warn you about one of the ways they might try to do so," Tom said. "It's no reason to stop learning. If anything, you should try to learn more so you're prepared."

"You really think that will happen?" Hermione asked. "Draco and Pansy have been quiet lately."

"That's because they have suffered the sting of a recent defeat," Tom said. "I'd wager that after the Christmas holiday they won't be nearly so subdued."

"Oh," Hermione said, disappointed. She knew she would never be friends with all of her fellow Slytherins, but she had hoped that the current uneasy truce might hold. "Good thing you'll be around to help me, then."

"Actually..." Tom said, "I'm afraid you're going to have to stop using the diary soon."

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, startled. "Are you mad at me about something?"

"No, not at all," Tom said, shaking his head. "It's my fault, really. I never intended for anybody else to write in the diary."

"You see, the way the diary works is that when anybody writes in it, it pulls a little bit of energy from them," Tom continued. "It fuels the enchantments keeping the diary together, and it provides context for the words-that's why I'm able to create such detailed reproductions of the things I wrote about."

"What are you trying to say, Tom?" Hermione asked. She had never known him to talk around a point like this, and his behavior was making her nervous.

"Have you been feeling tired and irritable?" Tom said. "Experiencing unusually frequent headaches?"

Hermione nodded as a sinking feeling formed in the pit of her stomach.

"Some of that is because you're trying to learn the fourth year curriculum two years early," Tom said, "but some of it is because the diary has been siphoning off your energy."

"What does that even mean?" Hermione asked. "Am I going to be ok?"

"Oh, of course. If we hadn't caught this before the end of the school year you might have been in trouble, but as it is once you stop using the diary you'll go back to normal in no time," Tom replied. "But you should stop using it soon."

"Can you do anything to fix this?" Hermione asked. "Now that you know what's going on, I mean."

"If somebody new picks up the diary, I could limit the damage now that I know what to look for," Tom said. "But you and I have shared too much, the connection between us is wedged open."

"This is terrible," Hermione said. She couldn't believe that the one bright spot in an otherwise difficult year had been so badly tarnished.

"I'm sorry," Tom said, but Hermione waved it off. Even if he had been causing her headaches, he had helped her so much this year that a little bit of suffering was well worth it.

"What if I'm willing to chance it?" Hermione asked. "After all, a few headaches aren't much, compared to the chance to learn from you."

"You trust me, right?" Tom asked. He waited until she nodded to continue. "Then trust me when I tell you it's too dangerous. I really am sorry."

"Fine," Hermione said, pouting a little bit. "But somebody new could use the diary safely?"

"Yes," Tom said. "Did you have anybody in mind?"

"I might know somebody who could use your help," Hermione replied.

She refused to say anything else-a petty bit of revenge for Tom's insistence that they be separated, but it made her feel a little better-and soon she experienced the disorientation that always accompanied her exit from the diary. Packing up her things, she tried to focus on the benefits she had gained from meeting Tom, rather than the loneliness she was facing in the future.

The next day she heard that Colin Creevy had been found petrified, clutching his camera to his face like a talisman. The Heir of Slytherin had claimed his first human victim.

ooOoo

Hermione threw herself into her studies with a renewed fervor. Faced with only one more week of Tom's advice, she wanted to wring every scrap of knowledge out of him that she could in the time she had. It was during their final session that she broached the subject of the Chamber of Secrets.

"You know, they thought the Chamber had been opened while I was at school," Tom said.

"What? Why didn't you say anything?" Hermione asked.

"You didn't ask," Tom said, mildly. "Also, I don't think it's related."

"Why? Is there more than one Chamber of Secrets?" Hermione asked. "I guess Slytherin could have more than one Heir."

"No," Tom said, shaking his head. "It's because when I was in school nobody was petrified. A girl was killed, and they expelled the boy who was responsible."

"Who was it?" Hermione asked. If the wizard responsible for opening the chamber had been a school boy fifty years ago, he would would still be in his prime as a wizard now. Revenge was as good a motive as any she could think of for setting some kind of terror loose on the muggleborn population.

"Rubeus Hagrid," Tom said. "I caught him, actually."

"Hagrid? The groundskeeper?" Hermione said, shocked. "He hardly makes a likely Heir of Slytherin."

"No, but he is just the kind of fool who would try to raise an acromantula in a school full of children," Tom said, scowling. The normally friendly boy looked quite threatening when he was angry-Hermione was glad she had always been on his good side.

She was still stunned by the news that Hagrid had any connection to the Chamber of Secrets. She could believe that he would try to keep some kind of monster as a pet-from what Neville had told her about the groundskeeper, he didn't seem to realize how vulnerable normal wizards could be-but as far as she knew, he didn't have an anti-muggleborn bone in his body. Of course, his friendly relationship with Ron, Neville, and Harry didn't really prove anything one way or the other on that front.

"Still, you don't think he could be behind the petrifications?" Hermione asked.

"Not at all. He's the groundskeeper now," Tom said, shaking his head. "He doesn't need to keep his pets in the castle any more. Besides, if he had anything on his hands that could petrify people, Dumbledore would know about it."

"You'd think Dumbledore would know if one of his students was the Heir of Slytherin," Hermione said. She couldn't find it in herself to share Tom's blind faith in Dumbledore.

"He'll figure out what's going on, you'll see," Tom said. "There's no wizard alive who could pull the wool over Dumbledore's eyes for long."

"I hope you're right. I'm scared," Hermione admitted. "People are being petrified, and now I'm going to lose my best friend in the castle."

"Hey, don't worry," Tom said, giving her the crooked little smile she had come to associate with him. "We'll see each other again."

"You think so?" Hermione asked.

"I know so," Tom replied.

With that, the familiar whirl of sensation gathered Hermione up and deposited her on the floor of her dorm. She checked the time and was glad to see that she had plenty of time to get to her study session with Neville.

It was their last study session of the year, but it passed much like the others. Neville worked on the potion that they would be brewing in their next class. Hermione read ahead in transfiguration and kept an eye out for any mistakes. Things departed from the usual script when Neville turned to go and Hermione caught him by the arm, turning him around.

"Neville, wait up," Hermione said. "I wanted to give you an early Christmas present."

Neville looked down and blushed. Hermione rushed to reassure him.

"Don't worry, I know this is a surprise. I didn't expect you to get me anything," Hermione said. "I just want you to have this."

With that, she pulled Tom's diary-back in its original cover-and slid it across the table to Neville. He looked at it a little dubiously.

"A diary?" Neville asked.

"It's the diary of somebody who was the Head Boy in Hogwarts back in 1945," Hermione explained.

Neville flipped the book open, surprised to see blank pages. He looked at Hermione and raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

"Write your name in it," Hermione instructed.

Neville looked a little skeptical, but he obediantly drew a quill out of his pack and scrawled his name in the book. He jumped a little when the ink swirled around and disappeared, and again when it spelled out a greeting.

"Hermione," Neville said, "where did you get this?"

"Can you keep a secret?" Hermione asked. She waited for Neville to nod before continuing. "The Malfoy's have been using this book as their own personal tutor. Draco left it in the common room early in the term and I nicked it."

"Hermione!" Neville exclaimed, shocked.

"What? I can break the rules sometimes. Especially when Malfoy's involved," Hermione said, unable to keep a giggle from escaping her lips. "Don't worry, your other Christmas present won't be stolen."

"Yeah, well..." Neville said, blushing and looking down again. "You've been using this for a while, then? Have you noticed any side effects?"

"No," Hermione said, shaking her head. She considered mentioning the headaches and fatigue, but she really did think Neville would benefit from working with Tom, and he didn't want him to reject the gift out of a misguided sense of caution. "I wouldn't give you something if I thought it was dangerous. It is dead useful, though. How do you think I managed to answer all of Snape's questions and keep on working ahead in other classes?"

"If it's that helpful, why give it up?" Neville said, then immediately held his hands up in apology. "It's just, I mean, you have to be careful with magical books-especially when they're smarter than you."

"It's ok. Neville," Hermione said, moving to stand directly in front of him and placing her hands on his shoulders. "You're my friend. I want you to do well. Not just in potions, in everything."

Neville met her eyes, and Hermione tried to pour all of her sincere desire that he succeed into her gaze. Time seemed to stretch on unnaturally, as Neville almost looked like he was in some kind of trance. Finally Neville nodded, and she smiled.

The movement seemed to break Neville out of his trance, as he suddenly blushed bright red and looked down. He hurriedly gathered his things-including the diary-and rushed out of the room, stammering out a goodbye as he left.

Hermione smiled fondly as she watched him go. Even after a year and a half of school, he was prone to fits of nerves at the oddest times. She knew Tom would be able to help him with his school work, and she hoped he would be able to help Neville with his confidence as well.

ooOoo

Hermione enjoyed the Christmas break she spent with her family. As Tom had predicted, she soon stopped suffering from headaches and began feeling more rested when she woke up in the morning. Still, even with the looming threat of the Chamber of Secrets, she spent much of the time eager to get back to Hogwarts. Her time there just felt more real than time spent in the muggle world.

When her parents dropped her off at the Hogwarts Express, she couldn't help but feel that she was heading home. Being able to use her wand again felt like regaining a lost limb, and even donning the cumbersome robes of the Hogwarts school uniform somehow felt right.

She smiled when she returned to the familiar confines of the Slytherin Common Room, ignoring the glares from her less friendly housemates. She practically skipped to her classes, eager to get back into the Hogwarts routine.

And then she woke up three days into the new term to the announcement that Justin Finch-Fletchley had been found petrified in the corridor.

ooOoo

Harry jerked his head around as Ron elbowed him in the side. The two of them were waiting in the corridor outside of the classroom where Neville and Hermione were currently sharing their weekly study session. Harry's invisibility cloak, made large enough to cover an adult wizard, comfortably fit over them both. Harry had spaced out for a while, staring at the far wall as he tried once more to puzzle out the identity of the Heir of Slytherin. Ron, who was taking this whole outing quite seriously, was watching the classroom door like a hawk.

Ron had come back from the Christmas holiday more convinced than ever that Malfoy was the Heir of Slytherin. Harry was inclined to believe Hermione and Blaise on the subject-even Ron admitted that he probably ought to make an exception to his "never trust a Slytherin" policy for the muggleborn girl, given the circumstances-but he agreed that they had to do something after Justin was petrified.

Harry had volunteered the use of his invisibility cloak, and Ron had come up with a plan. Rather than wander around the dungeons looking for the Slytherin common room, they could wait in a place where they knew a Slytherin would be, and then follow her back. It looked like their plan was about to pay off, as the classroom door swung open.

Hermione entered the corridor, followed by Neville. She bade her study partner farewell before heading off down the hall. Harry and Ron tried to keep close enough behind her not to be separated by a moving stairwell, while not getting so close that they tipped her off to their presence.

Ron gave Harry a thumbs up when Hermione went straight down the stairs. Harry smiled back at his friend. One of their worries had been that she might decide to hit the library for an hour or four before heading back to the common room, but it looked like she was going to go straight home.

Harry's smile faded a bit as he took another look at their quarry. He didn't know Hermione well, but he remembered that the girl always had a certain frantic energy about her. It was most pronounced when she was studying, but even when she was moving down the hallways Harry remembered that she didn't so much walk as bustle.

Today her gait was more of a plod. She moved as though a great weight rested on her shoulders. Harry thought it was important to catch the Heir in order to protect the students and get the school back to normal, but seeing Hermione really drove home the unique burden that the situation was putting on muggleborn students.

Harry's musings were cut short as they reached the dungeons and Hermione stopped in front of a blank stretch of wall. With a grimace on her face she intoned "Pure Blood" before stepping through the portal that appeared in front of her. Harry and Ron followed on her heels.

Entering the common room, Hermione made her way to an arm chair near the back of the room. Harry tugged on Ron's arm, guiding them to a spot against the wall that looked likely to remain unoccupied.

Unfortunately for Hermione, she had chosen to sit quite close to Draco Malfoy. He had had his head buried in a book, and Harry hadn't even noticed his presence until he looked up and graced Hermione with his trademark sneer.

"Still wasting your time on Longbottom?" Malfoy asked. He was looking at Hermione with the sort of scorn that he usually reserved for the Gryffindors.

"Neville's actually progressing quite nicely," Hermione replied. "It's nice to work with somebody who's willing to make an effort instead of just coasting on their family name."

Hermione's tone of voice was light, showing no trace of the fatigue she had shown when she thought herself alone in the corridor. Apparently being in Slytherin meant you always had to have your guard up, even in your own common room. Harry gave silent thanks once more than he had managed to convince the sorting hat to put him in Gryffindor.

"Ha! Once the Heir is done with all of your kind I bet he starts in on squibs like Longbottom," Malfoy replied.

"The Heir?" Hermione said, scratching her chin in thought. "Oh, yes, I'm sure your hero will get rid of all the wizards you don't like. He managed to defeat Justin, which puts him ahead of half of the Dueling Club. And let's not forget how he managed to overcome Colin Creevy... truly, he must be a master of magic."

"Make fun all you want," Draco said, "but you won't be laughing when you're petrified."

"Well, obviously," Hermione said, giving Draco a disdainful look. "But you know, that's the part I don't understand."

Hermione pulled out her wand, causing Draco to flinch back and sending a ripple of murmurs through the crowd of Slytherins that had gathered to watch the argument. Harry didn't think she was actually going to hex Draco, and his guess was confirmed when she pulled a piece of parchment out of her bag. Muttering a spell, Hermione waved her wand briefly over the parchment, which gathered itself into a ball before transforming into stone and flowing into the form of a small figurine. Standing about twelve inches high, it bore a remarkable resemblance to Draco Malfoy.

"So you're the Heir of Slytherin, and you've petrified Colin Creevy. That's great, but once he gets some Restorative Draught he'll be good as new, and he'll be able to tell people who you are. So why stop there? Why not finish the job?" Hermione tapped her wand against the figure, which fell into pieces on the table. "That's what I would do. If I really wanted somebody out of the school, I mean."

Hermione's voice had remained cool and composed through her entire demonstration and, though her eyes didn't leave Malfoy's her expression was placid, as though she were debating the merits of taking one lump of sugar or two in a cup of tea. Harry felt a shiver run down his back and next to him Ron let out a whispered "mental" that was fortunately drowned out by the muttering of the Slytherin audience.

"Shows what you know," Draco rallied after taking a moment to compose himself. "The Heir is going to get Dumbledore sacked and drive all the mu-muggleborns out of here without even needing to kill anybody."

"That's where you're wrong, Malfoy," Hermione replied. "My blood is as muddy as it gets, and I'm not going anywhere."

Hermione turned her attention to the crowd around them for the first time, looking away from Malfoy as she stood and raised her voice.

"You hear that? You can jinx me, hex me, curse me, even petrify me, and I'm just going to keep coming back. If you want me out of here, you're going to have to go all the way," Hermione called out. "In fact, if any of you want me gone you might as well take your shot now, because it's not going to get any easier."

When she finished speaking Hermione began slowly turning around, glaring at the students around her as if daring them to attack. When her gaze passed the spot where Harry and Ron were hiding, the two of them physically recoiled. Harry had dueled Hermione repeatedly in the Dueling Club. He had seen what she looked like when they were fighting: focused, determined, intent on victory. That wasn't what he was seeing now.

Hermione looked furious. All of the anger and frustration that she had been holding in since the Chamber had been opened was plain to see on her face, together with an edge of desperation. Not the desperation of somebody who has given up hope, but the desperation of a cornered animal ready to lash out at anybody in its way.

Harry had always enjoyed sparring with Hermione, but you couldn't pay him enough to cross wands with her while she had that expression on her face.

A long moment passed as Hermione continued to stare down the room. Harry relaxed as he realized that he wasn't about to see an actual duel to the death. Hermione apparently reached the same conclusion as she snorted, then gathered her bag and left the room without saying another word.

Harry tugged on Ron's arm once more, and they took advantage of the general hubbub caused by Hermione's dramatics to slip out of the room unnoticed. Once they were safely away from the Slytherin common room entrance Ron turned to speak to Harry.

"Well, I don't think that Malfoy is the Heir any more," Ron said, shaking his head. "But now I don't know whether I should be more worried about the Heir of Slytherin or Hermione bloody Granger."

"I don't think Hermione is out to petrify anybody," Harry said.

"No, she's ready to skip straight to murder," Ron replied. "What if she decides she wants to even the score with the Heir, and starts taking out purebloods?"

Harry couldn't tell if Ron was mostly serious or mostly joking. For that matter, he wasn't sure himself if he was more worried for Hermione or more worried about what Hermione might do.

"Look," Harry said, "if she does snap, there are plenty of purebloods to go after in Slytherin before she would need to hurt any innocent Gryffindors."

"Fair enough," Ron replied, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulder as the pair started making their invisible way back to their rooms. "I always knew there was something off about that girl. Too much studying drives you mad, everybody knows that."

ooOoo

Finding their way back to the Gryffindor tower turned out to be more difficult than Harry had expected. While the dungeons were simple enough to navigate when they were following somebody who lived there, in the absence of a guide Harry and Ron were confronted with a twisty maze of passages, all alike.

The two of them stayed under the invisibility cloak as all of the fireworks in the Slytherin common room had lasted almost until curfew, and the last thing they wanted was to be caught in the corridors after hours by Snape. They were approaching yet another identical T-junction when Harry heard footsteps heading their way from around the corner.

He grabbed Ron's arm and the two of them flattened against the wall. Harry's heart was hammering in his chest as he wondered if he had managed to summon his potions professor with a stray thought. Still, even Snape couldn't see the invisible, so all they should have to do is keep quiet and he might lead them right out of the dungeons.

Harry was surprised when torchlight glinted off the golden hair of Gilderoy Lockhart as their defense professor rounded the corner and strode past them. Next to him, Ron let out a sigh of relief. Harry elbowed him for making a sound, but agreed with the sentiment-until Lockhart stopped stock still in the middle of the corridor, not twenty feet away from them.

Lockhart looked around nervously before reaching down to his belt and withdrawing a potions vial. Harry couldn't tell what he was drinking, but he did see that the professor noticeably relaxed once he finished the potion. Shrugging, Lockhart took another step forward, before whirling around as he drew his wand and pointed it straight at Harry and Ron.

"_Fundatio Onis_," was the incantation that Lockhart called out, and a cloud of white powder billowed forth from his wand. Harry didn't have much of a chance to examine it, since the stuff clung to the front of the invisibility cloak, blocking his view. A moment later Lockhart whisked the cloak off of the two of them, and Harry realized that the powder had revealed their location.

"Professor, I can explain-" Harry said, but cut himself off as Lockhart winced and held up a hand to silence the two of them. He then reached for his belt once more, slugging down another potion.

"Sorry about that, boys, the supersensory draught will let you hear a heartbeat at a hundred feet," Lockhart said, "but it makes holding a conversation rather uncomfortable."

"How did you know we were there in the first place?" Ron asked. Harry didn't know if asking how they got caught was the best response to being found out after curfew, but Lockhart seemed happy enough to show off as he reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked for all the world like a spinning top.

"Pocket sneakoscope, the famous wizard should never leave home without it," Lockhart said, giving Harry a significant look. "Speaking of which, what are you two doing down here?"

"We were, um, exploring the castle," Harry said, doing his best to look innocent. His best puppy dog eyes expression never seemed to sway the Dursleys, but he had been having better luck since coming to Hogwarts. "But then we got lost."

"Exploring the castle," Lockhart repeated, then cast a significant look at the cloak in his hands. "Under an invisibility cloak?"

"It's no fun exploring if everybody can see you, is it?" Ron asked. "What was that spell you used, anyway?"

"Oh, that? It's a makeup application charm, actually. I learned it from a witch I met in Paris when..." Lockhart trailed off, a small smile on his face, then shook his head. "I'll tell you boys the rest of that story after you graduate. The point is, any charm can be useful if you have the wit to recognize when to use it."

Harry and Ron nodded then looked expectantly up at Lockhart, awaiting his judgment. Lockhart leveled a stern gaze on them, but he couldn't help breaking into an amused smile after a moment had passed.

"All right, I'll lead you back up to the common room, and I won't even take any points. But," Lockhart said, holding up a hand to forestall their thanks, "I will be holding on to this cloak."

"But Professor, that belonged to my father!" Harry protested.

"I know, Harry, and I'll give it back at the end of the year. But right now things are very tense, and the last thing we need is invisible students wandering the corridors," Lockhart replied. "You can talk to the Headmaster if you think this is unreasonable, but I think he'll agree with me."

Harry nodded glumly. With two students petrified, he was sure that Dumbledore had bigger things to worry about than his invisibility cloak. Not to mention that getting caught wandering around after hours was hardly using it wisely.

He tried to look on the bright side as they followed Lockhart out of the dungeons. At least Lockhart was, as far as Harry could tell, a man of his word.

ooOoo

Hermione lay on her back on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her confrontation with Draco had left her emotionally drained, but even still she couldn't help feeling a sense of dread. Somebody out there was attacking muggleborns and a good portion of her house was cheering him on.

"All right there, Hermione?" Blaise called out as he walked into the room.

"Ack!" Hermione exclaimed, sitting up in shock. "You're not allowed in here!"

"It's ok, he's with me," Daphne explained, walking up to stand beside Blaise.

"Besides, what are you going to do, petrify me?" Blaise asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Hermione stared at Blaise in shock. After a moment, a chuckle escaped her lips, almost involuntarily. The chuckle turned into laughter, which began to acquire a bit of a hysterical edge. Finally she managed to gain control of herself, and shot a glare at Blaise.

"That's not funny," she chided him.

"I beg to differ," Blaise said, before fixing her with a serious look. "You needed that, Granger. You've been wound up tighter than Gringott's security."

"Prat," Hermione said, swatting him half-heartedly on the shoulder.

"Look," Daphne said, "nobody is happy that some maniac is stalking muggleborn students-"

She paused to glare at Blaise as he gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like "Malfoy" before continuing. "But blowing up at half of Slytherin is not a good way to cope."

Hermione just looked at Daphne. She had always wondered to what extent her relationship with the other girl was based on her ability to do things that would benefit Daphne, but right now she couldn't see anything but genuine concern on the other girl's face.

"What you need to do," Daphne said, "is spend some time with people who aren't Malfoy. We're worried about you, Hermione. You always push yourself so hard, and with everything that's going on..."

"Besides," Blaise added, "you've been spending so much time buried in your books that you haven't had any left to help me with my transfiguration."

She glared at him, but couldn't hold it for long before breaking into a smile. It was a relief to see that at least some of the students in her house were nothing like Draco Malfoy.

ooOoo

Hermione sighed as she took a seat in her usual spot for Defense class. It was nice that her friends were supporting her, but the simple fact was that two muggleborn students had been petrified in the last two weeks of class time. Every time she walked through the hallway she felt like a target had been painted on her back. Oddly enough, the only place she could really relax was in the classroom.

"Wands away, everybody," Lockhart announced as he swept into the room. "I'm afraid we won't be performing our practical exercises today."

A murmur of protest swept through the classroom. Even though target practice in defense wasn't as exciting as the dueling club, the students still enjoyed the competition. Lockhart took note of their protests and nodded in sympathy.

"I'm sure you'll all be heartened to hear why, though," Lockhart said. "I have good news: we've captured the Heir of Slytherin!"

Hermione sat bolt upright in shock. Glancing around the classroom, she saw that she wasn't the only one. The entire classroom was silent as the students focused intently on their professor. Lockhart savored the moment, waiting for the tension to reach a fever pitch before he spoke.

"As a matter of fact, I was involved in his capture," Lockhart said, flashing his winning smile. "I thought you might like to hear about it before the story winds up in a book."

This time the murmur in the classroom was much more positive.

"As you all know, the headmaster has us patrolling the castle," Lockhart said. "What you may not know is that we each have an assigned location to patrol. Well, who should I see ducking around a corner last night, well out of his assigned area, but one Rubeus Hagrid!"

"Hagrid? He's the Heir of Slytherin?" Blaise exclaimed, voicing the thoughts of all of the students.

"I'm afraid so," Lockhart replied.

"It's just... he doesn't seem the type," Blaise said.

"It just goes to show, you never know what might be lurking behind a friendly smile," Lockhart said, smiling at the class. "Now, if you'll allow me to continue?"

He looked across the room as the students gradually settled down. Hermione didn't say anything, but her mind was whirling. Everything she knew about the chamber suggested that Hagrid was innocent, but Professor Lockhart seemed so confident in his story.

"As I said, I confronted Hagrid. He seemed highly agitated," Lockhart said, "unable to answer the simplest questions. And then..."

"What happened next, Professor?" Blaise asked.

"Then, I'm afraid, Hagrid looked behind me and shouted 'get him, Blinky!'," Lockhart said, sighing. "I turned around, and he shoved me into the wall. As you can imagine, Hagrid packs quite the shove. By the time I had sorted myself out, he had managed to escape."

"Fortunately," Lockhart said, "I was able to alert the other professors. A group of us arrived at Hagrid's hut as he was in the middle of packing his bags to flee."

Tentatively, Hermione raised her hand and waited for Lockhart to call on her. "Professor, are you sure there isn't some innocent explanation. Hagrid can be absent minded sometimes, but it's hard to believe he could do something malicious."

"I'm afraid not, Miss Granger," Lockhart said. "I still have the bruises from our encounter. And this isn't the first time he's done something like this-he was involved the last time the Chamber was opened as well."

Seeing her disappointed expression, Lockhart seemed to search for some way to soften the blow.

"Perhaps he is innocent, or merely a pawn of the true Heir," Lockhart said, shrugging his shoulders. "If he is, he'll need to come up with a more convincing explanation-I heard him telling the aurors that he didn't remember anything at all that happened last night."

As the classroom erupted in excited conversation, Hermione's suspicious gaze never left the professor.

ooOoo


End file.
